Tilda floored the gas, and the car shot toward the highway.
"He's got the nerve to be angry with you?"
"Ronan, you're just too naive, too kind for your own good."
"A man like Jack Delgado, living off a woman—do you really think he'd ever have the guts to die?"
"Don't bring him up. It's tiresome."
I drifted there between the two of them, listening to them chatter happily about what to have for dinner.
The last thread of longing in my heart finally broke.
Five years.
I gave her the five most precious years of my life, building everything from nothing beside her.
And all I got in the end was "gold-digging kept man."
Tilda.
Have you forgotten?
Back when you started out, you were so broke you couldn't even afford to rent a single studio.
It was me—the kept man you talk about.
I sorted freight at the docks for three months until the bones in my hands went out of shape, and I paid your rent.
It's fine.
You won't have to be bothered anymore.
Jack Delgado is dead. There's no one left wedged between the two of you, spoiling the view.
They drove straight home.
When my mother-in-law saw Tilda risen from the dead, she didn't look the least bit surprised.
Her face was flushed and healthy, her clothes neat, nothing like the woman from the day before.
She only asked, offhand,
"Where's Jack? He didn't come back with you?"
Ronan hooked his arm through hers, wheedling.
"It's all my fault, coming up with that crazy idea. Now Jack's too embarrassed to come home."
She caught Ronan's hand and patted it fondly.
"How is any of this your fault? You were only doing it for Tilda's sake."
"It's that penniless country boy Jack who couldn't behave himself!"
I drifted behind them, watching them lean into each other like a real family.
What was left to figure out?
This grief over a dead wife, the grief that had cost me my life—
from start to finish it had all been Tilda's carefully staged play.
Everyone was an audience. I was the only clown on the stage.
My soul followed them through the front door.
The table was already laid with a full spread of dishes my mother-in-law had prepared.
Tilda ruffled Ronan's hair and said to him, smiling,
"See how much my mom dotes on you."
"Everything on this table is your favorite."
"She knows you can't take anything spicy, that you won't touch cilantro—today she even hand-picked every side dish."
I hovered by the table, looking at the meal she had put such care into.
And I gave a helpless little laugh.
Five years married to Tilda, and neither she nor her mother ever remembered a single thing I liked.
Say a dish was good, and I'd never see it on the table again.
Say I didn't eat scallions, and every meal came with scallions.
A few times I couldn't help complaining to Tilda.
She only scolded me, impatient.
"My mom's getting old, her memory's bad. Can't you show a little understanding?"
"Forget my mom—even I can't keep track of all your annoying little quirks."
But she remembered that Ronan couldn't eat spicy food, remembered that Ronan wouldn't touch cilantro.
The one thing she couldn't remember was that I didn't eat scallions.
Five years of hardship shared meant less than Ronan's three months in Harbor City.
While Tilda was peeling shrimp for Ronan, my body was slowly going cold in a hotel suite ten kilometers away.
"Sir? Are you all right? Do you need help?"
The attendant lifted me up, and one look was enough to scare the soul out of him.
A face white as paper, both eyes still open, unwilling to close.
Dried blood clinging to the corner of my mouth.
"Ah! He's dead! There's a dead man!"
The attendant scrambled out of the room and called the hotel manager at once.
Ten minutes later, a patrol car and an ambulance arrived together.
The doctor didn't even attempt resuscitation. He gave his verdict to the officers straightaway.
"He's been dead over half an hour. There's no point trying to revive him."
