No Room for Forgiveness

I had the worst argument to date with Elliot.

It ended with him swiping everything off the table and shouting at me, “Anne, quit suspecting me! Nothing is going on between me and Zelda!”

I silently put away the lipstick I found inside his shirt pocket. It was a limited-edition lipstick from a luxury brand, which was very difficult to find. I could tell someone had used it. I sighed desolately. “Could you at least control yourself in front of our child?”

He slapped my wrist and made me drop the lipstick to the ground. His strike left a bright red imprint of his palm on my skin.

“I’m sick of living like this. You can do whatever you want from now on.”

With that, he grabbed his coat and walked out, slamming the door behind him as he left. The sound of the door slamming shut was so loud that it made my ears throb.

I squatted meekly on the ground to clean up the mess he left behind.

That was when my daughter, who was only five years old, ran out of the bedroom. She gently hugged me and caressed the red mark on my arm.

“Mommy, does it hurt?“

I felt my heart ache when I looked at the way she was about to cry. I took the child in my arms. “Ava, be a good girl, alright? It doesn’t hurt. Mommy is just… tired.”

I had trusted Eliott for seven years, yet he had been testing my patience again and again with Zelda. At this point, I could not stand being married to him anymore.

Ava got up and cupped my hand in her tiny palms. “Mommy, I’ll take you to bed to get some sleep. The teachers at kindergarten always tell me that you should get some sleep if you're tired!"

I felt much better when I noted how loving Ava was.

With that, we went to bed. I covered us with a blanket and laid side by side. I read bedtime stories to her—something I would never run out of to tell her.

At some point in the night, the rhythm of her breathing became faint and steady.

The display of my phone suddenly lit up when I received a text.

It was a picture from Zelda. In it, Eliott was lying naked in bed. The bright white bed sheet hinted that they were in a hotel. She did not offer any elaboration but I knew it was her way of staking her power over me.

I felt my blood boil as something tore at my heart. I staggered into the living room to look for my pills. However, the bottle of medicine that I usually kept in the cabinet was gone.

While I twisted in pain, I suddenly made the connection.

It was Eliott. When we were fighting this morning, he had flipped the house upside down. The bottle of medicine was flung out of the window at one point. I needed those pills; it was a matter of life and death.

A fatal throb in my heart told me that it was a cardiac arrest. I had already levitated into the air as a spirit by the time I realized what happened.

I looked at my daughter sleeping soundly in bed and felt an urge to cry. Now that I was dead, I was finally free, but what about my daughter? She was just a child.

Ava slept until the next morning when she woke up naturally. She opened her bleary eyes and tried to snuggle into my arms the way she always did. That was when she found out I was not by her side.

She seemed slightly dejected when she realized I was gone. Then, she went around the house looking for me. She went into every room calling out my name over and over until she finally found me on the couch in the living room.

She pressed herself to my body and whimpered in a darling voice, “Mommy, why are you sleeping here? You are supposed to be in bed with me!”

I did not respond even after she had snuggled against me for a while.

Then, she pursed her lips and seemed upset. Despite that, she was very understanding. “It’s alright. Mommy must be tired and needs more rest.”

My poor baby was just a child. I barely even had time to teach her the concept of life and death. As far as she was concerned, Mommy was only asleep and was going to eventually wake up.