I scrolled for nearly twenty minutes and only made it back a week.
The tears had already dried. The glow of the screen stung my eyes. I blinked against the dryness and opened his banking app.
I had all his passwords. I'd just never used them.
He knew I never would.
So the truth was right there, laid bare in the numbers on the screen, each one a blade twisting into my eyes.
I sent my first message to the me from five years in the future.
【So in five years, you and Tim……】
The reply came fast.
【Already divorced.】
【The house was paid for out of his mother's account. Title's in his father's name.】
Tim woke up and came into the bedroom.
He noticed my dark circles and asked, carefully, whether I'd gone downstairs to meet him last night.
I looked up.
The lipstick on his chin was gone. The perfume-soaked shirt had been changed.
I shook my head, too exhausted to speak. My whole body felt wrung out, like I'd survived a fever that hadn't broken.
He didn't notice. He just seemed relieved, and cheerfully told me he was taking me to see the house today.
“That fast? We only finished the down payment last week.”
He bent down behind me and wrapped his arms around me, his voice dripping with affection.
“Don't underestimate your husband. The paperwork's all done. My mom said if we're free today we should go check the layout, and if everything looks good, renovations start right away.”
“I'm off today. I was planning to go take a look. Are you coming, or should we just stick with the plan we already agreed on?”
I slipped in a question, casual as I could manage. “Both our names are on the title, right?”
He paused for two seconds, then kept nuzzling my hair.
“The name's on it.”
He didn't say whose. He didn't actually answer my question.
Rain hammered against the window, a downpour so violent it drained whatever strength I had left.
I nodded and went to grab my commuter bag from the shelf.
“I've got time. Let's go together.”
At Riverside Gardens, Georgia Chavez was already waiting inside the empty, bare-walled house.
Standing beside her was Pansy Dickerson.
When she saw me, Pansy flashed a saccharine smile.
“You must be Muriel! You look like you haven't been sleeping well. Mrs. Chavez mentioned you and Tim have been married three years and still haven't gotten pregnant. She was worried you'd be too busy to handle everything, so she asked me to help weigh in.”
Her gaze dropped to our clasped hands.
She was young enough that the hostility and challenge in her eyes showed through. Barely concealed.
Probably wasn't trying to conceal it.
“You don't mind, do you?”
“She doesn't.” Tim answered for me before I could open my mouth.
Then he leaned in and explained in a low voice：“Muriel, Pansy is the daughter of my mom's friend. My mom's always treated her like her own.”
“She's just here to help take a look, make sure the renovation plan isn't something we'd hate.”
I looked at him.
His mother's friend's daughter? He'd never once mentioned her.
I asked him quietly：“Is there anything you're keeping from me?”
“How could there be? Muriel, I would never keep anything from you.” He dipped his head, patient and gentle.
And in that moment, something in my heart settled for good.
Georgia spotted me and lifted her chin a fraction.
“Oh, you're here? Well, come look around then.”
Tim said nothing else. He didn't even seem to register anything wrong with that greeting. He held my hand and started walking deeper inside.
His right hand holding mine. Pansy at his left.
He stood in the middle, ready to inspect a new house titled under his father's name and decide how to renovate it.
I smiled. Tim stopped mid-step.
Because I wasn't moving forward.
Under his bewildered gaze, I reached into my bag and pulled out the divorce papers I'd printed the night before. I held them out to him.
“I'll pass. Take your mother's friend's daughter instead.
Here's the agreement. Sign it and mail it back to me.”
“Also, I want my share of the down payment back. I've screenshotted the transfer records and I'll send them to you. Check them against yours.”
