03
03
I stared at that ring,
and all at once I thought of the ring gleaming on Vivian Shaw's finger, and I understood at last—
so the custom diamond ring he'd supposedly nearly died to get had been on Vivian's hand all along.
The one on my finger was nothing but a fifteen-dollar knockoff.
I slid the ring off and set it aside without a second's hesitation.
A light rain was falling outside, and muddy water splashed up onto me.
I went back to the old house. When my mother saw me, her eyes landed on my suitcase and she frowned.
"What are you doing back here? Did you and your boyfriend fight?"
I drew a deep breath. "We broke up."
Just those few words, and my mother went off like a bomb.
"Broke up?! Have you lost your mind? Debbie, you're twenty-eight this year, not eighteen! Don't get married soon and you'll be a thirty-year-old spinster!"
"Did you do something wrong again? Get back there and apologize, right now!"
Her accusations came at me almost in a roar, and she reached out and shoved me hard toward the door.
In that moment, all I felt was bone-deep exhaustion.
"Mom, Nathan doesn't love me. Even if we got married—"
"You still have to get married! Even if you marry him and then divorce, that's better than being some unmarriable dead weight!"
I froze where I stood, staring at my mother in disbelief.
The next second, someone shoved me right out the front door.
The rain came down harder. I was shivering with cold, and the old house was too far out to catch a cab, so it was nearly the middle of the night before I found a run-down little motel.
The sharp reek of mildew and the stench from the toilet filled the room. Crammed into a space barely two square meters, I couldn't even stretch out my legs without hurting.
I slept in a daze until morning,
and the next day at work I drifted through everything in a fog, until suddenly I heard a commotion.
The moment I looked up, my whole body went rigid.
My mother had barged in, furious, and Nathan was right behind her.
"Mom, why are you—"
Slap! Before I could finish, something landed hard across my face.
There was nothing held back in that slap. My head rang with it, and my left cheek swelled up at once.
My coworkers crowded over in an instant. "Who are you? Why are you hitting her out of nowhere?"
"Leave now, or we're calling the police."
"I'm her mother. She did something wrong, so I'll discipline her! This is a family matter—call who? Call nothing!"
Her words made everyone pause, exchanging uneasy glances.
She jabbed a finger in my face and yelled, "A grown woman, throwing a jealous fit, making a whole scene about breaking up! Take a good look at yourself. Nathan's already a career elite at his age, and you, a lowly clerk, get to marry him and still don't know how to be grateful!"
A coworker tried to smooth it over.
"Debbie's very capable too. She's one of the mainstays of our company—"
"What good is being capable! A woman's proper path is to marry, have children, and stay home where she belongs."
"Running off to grind away out here, what's the point? In the end she still has to come back to the family."
"Why can't you learn from Vivi? She's so sensible, so obedient! If it were her, she'd never throw a jealous tantrum like this."
"There's a man who wants you right now, so quit making trouble! Do you have any idea—if it weren't for you, you worthless dead weight, that no-good father of yours would never have run off! If you can't get yourself married, I won't claim you as my daughter—"
The uglier her words got, the louder she got,
and every coworker in the office wore an expression of open embarrassment.
I felt like a soft-shelled clam pried open,
the tender flesh inside stabbed apart, cut after cut, until not a scrap of dignity was left.
My gaze drifted to Nathan. He was watching me quietly, with something smug in his eyes.
I knew he had seen the breakup text, and I knew that he was the one who'd brought my mother here to make this scene today.
I'd thought I would be devastated, that I'd trade insults with them.
But it turned out that when disappointment reaches its very bottom, a person can go utterly calm instead.
I heard my own voice, tired and steady.
"So what is it you want from me?"
