After that night, we stopped talking. I packed my things and stayed at Lily's place for several days.
But I couldn't stop thinking about Chad. I worried he couldn't even manage three meals a day on his own. After all, I'd taken care of him for ten full years. Habits like that are the hardest to break.
In the end, I couldn't harden my heart. I loaded up on groceries at the supermarket and headed home, arms full of bags.
I pushed the door open.
Two half-naked bodies were tangled together on our bed.
Eunice was wearing the lace nightgown.
The grocery bags slipped from my hands and hit the floor.
I lost all reason. I lunged at Eunice like a woman possessed, clawing at the nightgown on her body. She shrieked, scrambling to hide behind Chad.
"Jade! That's enough!"
Chad's palm cracked across my face, and he wrenched me to the ground.
I didn't feel the pain. I threw myself at him, screaming.
"You ungrateful bastard! I took care of you for ten years! I put you through college!"
"You wouldn't even have gotten the chance to go to school if it weren't for me! And this is how you repay me?"
"You two deserve each other! Karma will come for both of you!"
Chad watched my breakdown with cold detachment, looking at me the way someone looks at a lunatic.
Then he grabbed my wrists, tied them behind my back, and shoved me into the storage closet.
I hit the floor hard, and the impact kicked up a cloud of dust.
The coughing started immediately. Violent, uncontrollable. My asthma.
I pounded on the door with everything I had, my words slurring together as I begged.
"Let me out, Chad."
"Please... let me out..."
I couldn't even finish a full sentence.
On the other side of the door, Eunice whined, "God, she's so loud. When is she going to shut up?"
Chad knew I had asthma. He knew. And still he said, "She needs to learn her lesson this time. I'm going to make sure she remembers."
Gradually, each breath became harder to draw. My fists against the door grew weaker and weaker.
Lily saved me. She'd gotten my message just in time.
The doctor shook his head. "Young lady, that was a close call. One more minute and you wouldn't have made it."
Surviving that brush with death changed something in me. It was like a fog lifted.
If I wasn't the one who was supposed to die, then someone else deserved to.
I went to Chad's university and reported their affair. Then I compiled a full twenty pages of evidence into a presentation and posted it online.
But justice never came. What came instead was Chad, trying to talk me down.
"Jade, I do love you. I just... lost my way for a moment."
"Can you stop making a scene? If you're willing to let this go, you can go right back to your easy, comfortable life."
"All you have to do is stay home like before. You don't have to go out and deal with the world. Isn't that nice?"
So that was it. Three hundred and sixty-five days a year of devoted, tireless care, and in Chad's eyes, I'd just been sitting at home.
I couldn't understand how my life had come to this.
My mind started to crumble, piece by piece.
Every window ledge I passed made me want to jump.
Standing on the beach, I'd find myself drifting toward the water without thinking, wanting to keep walking until the waves swallowed me whole.
Then one night, late, when no one was around.
I pressed a blade to my left wrist and cut deep. Warm, thick liquid pulsed out in steady streams.
I closed my eyes and felt my body temperature draining away, degree by degree.
What pulled me back was a phone call from Sunnyside Group Home.
"Jade, we've found your birth mother."
"She's in the hospital right now, but her condition is stable. You should come see her when you get the chance."
A mother I had never met in my life reached across the void and pulled me back from the edge of death.
She reminded me that I wasn't alone in this world. That somewhere out there, someone still cared whether I lived or died.
