Ethan tapped the ash from his cigarette, and in a grave voice began to recount the story I had missed for seven years. He told me about the days when Daniel started feeling sharp pains in his bones, but hid it from me, lying about business trips to go to the hospital for tests. He told me about the day Daniel got the results, sitting on a hospital bench all afternoon in silence. At that time, Daniel’s company was at its peak with a bright future ahead. But fate had cruy erased him from life.
Why didn’t he tell me? I clenched my fists, my nails digging into my palms. I was his wife. Whatever happened, we should have faced it together. Why did he lie and say he was having an affair? Why did he push me away?
Ethan looked at me, his expression softening slightly, but still filled with pain.
“Do you remember what you were like back then, Laura? You were a delicate flower. You cried over everything. You were scared of ugly things. Daniel knew you better than anyone. He didn’t want you to see him in the emaciated, pathetic state of a dying man.”
Ethan continued, each word a stab to my heart.
“He wanted you to remember him as the handsome, arrogant Daniel, the bastard who left you so you would have the courage to hate him, to forget him, and to move on. Sometimes hate is a more effective painkiller than pity. It makes you stronger.”
I bit my lip to suppress a sob. So his cruelty that day was the most tender and painful protection he could offer me.
I had lived for seven years fueled by resentment, using my hatred for him as the engine to overcome my misery to keep from falling apart. I thought I was strong, but in reality I was just a stupid puppet in the clumsy play he had staged.
But what about the money? I hesitated. The 2 million. Where did he get that much money at that time?
Ethan stubbed out his cigarette inside.
“He sold the company, sold it at a loss, right when it was at its peak. In the business world, the rumor was that he had gone crazy or had gambling debts and needed cash urgently. He let the competition drive the price down, losing almost half its real value just to raise those $2 million in clean money to deposit in the bank for you. He said that in this life, he couldn’t protect you anymore, so he would let the money do it in his place.”
I buried my face in my hands, tears streaming uncontrollably. I remembered how for years I had cursed him, wishing him the worst every time I struggled. I reveled in the thought that he was living happily at the expense of my pain. But the truth was, while I was hating him, he was silently selling his life’s work, selling his last ounces of strength to pave the way for me.
The unfaithful husband I hated so much turned out to be the man who loved me to the point of foolishness.
Ethan ordered another black coffee on the rocks. The clinking of the ice against the glass sounded incredibly lonely. He began to delve deeper into those dark days, into the secrets Daniel had taken to his grave.
“Do you know what the first question he asked the doctor was when they handed him his death sentence?” Ethan looked at me, his gaze lost in a painful memory. “He didn’t ask how much time he had left or if there was a cure. He asked the doctor, ‘Will I be in a lot of pain? Will I get really ugly?’”
I was frozen. Daniel had never been a man who cared about his appearance. He always laughed when I told him he looked like a mess. And yet, in the face of death, his greatest fear was ugliness.
Ethan smiled sadly. “At the time, I called him an idiot, too. About to die and worried about being handsome or ugly. But he grabbed my hand. It was ice cold. And said, ‘You don’t get it, Ethan. Laura loves beautiful things, and she’s a neat freak. I don’t want her to see me losing all my hair, a skeleton lying in a hospital bed with a bunch of tubes. I don’t want her to have to change my diapers, to have to clean up after me. I’m scared. I’m scared of seeing the horror in her eyes when she sees me turned into a monster.’”
My tears started flowing again, hot, rolling down my cheeks. I remembered that I had, in fact, always been afraid of hospitals. The smell of disinfectant and seeing open wounds. Once Daniel fell off his motorcycle and scraped his arms and legs, the sight of the blood made me turn pale. He had to bandage himself while comforting me.
He remembered everything. He remembered even my smallest fears and used his own pain to shield my weakness. He was afraid it would traumatize me, that I would suffer, so he chose to push me away so I would only remember him as a handsome traitor, not a walking corpse.
“He suffered a lot, Laura.” Ethan’s voice broke. “Bone cancer is one of the most painful. Pains like someone drilling into your spinal cord so bad that even the strongest painkillers didn’t work. There were nights he would bite down on a towel so he wouldn’t scream. He would be drenched in sweat, writhing like a cooked shrimp. But as soon as morning came, he would force himself to sit up, comb his hair, put on that thick black trench coat to hide his increasingly emaciated body, and go out to play the part of an arrogant CEO.”
I pictured the scene, and my heart clenched. The man I had shared my life with, the strong man who had always protected me, had to endure that torture in solitude.
And what was I doing at that time? I was sitting in my rented room, stewing in my heartbreak, and silently cursing him. My indifference, my stupid naivity, was the second knife in his back.
After the cruel illness, he told me. Ethan choked on a sob. He said to me,
“Ethan, it hurts so much. I want to call Laura. I just want her to give me a hug, but I don’t dare. I’m afraid that if I hear her voice, I’ll soften. I’ll start crying and begging her to come back. And that would be pathetic, selfish. I’m about to die. I can’t drag her life down with me.”
I covered my mouth and broke down, sobbing uncontrollably in the middle of the empty diner. Daniel, you were such a fool. You took it upon yourself to decide for me. You assumed I couldn’t handle it. But you don’t know that the pain of being abandoned without knowing why, the pain of living with resentment and hatred for seven years is as cruel as death.
If you had told me even just one word, I would have been willing to walk through that hell with you. No matter how ugly, how bad you smelled, how emaciated you were, you were still my husband, the man I loved most. But now it was all too late. My apologies, my love. He would never be able to hear them.
I dried my tears with a paper napkin, trying to calm myself. There was still something I didn’t understand, something that had tormented me for years, making me feel inferior and humiliated. It was that woman, the young, beautiful, and elegant woman waiting for Daniel in the car that day.
“Who was she?” I asked in a choked voice. “Ethan, the girl who was in the car the day of the divorce. Was she really his new girlfriend? Did she know about his illness?”
At the mention of her, Ethan let out a laugh. A laugh so bitter it was extreme. He shook his head.
“New girlfriend? What the hell? She was a low-level model, a senior in the drama department that Daniel hired.”
“Hired?” My eyes widened.
“Yes, hired.” Ethan emphasized. “He paid her $500 for a day’s work. Daniel said he needed someone to play the part of the mistress and stage a final breakup scene. He chose her because she had a sophisticated, hotty air, the type of woman you were always jealous of. He wanted you to believe he had changed because he was crazy about a younger, more beautiful, and richer girl than you. So you would leave without looking back.”
$500. The price of the performance that broke my heart and changed my life completely. Just $500.
Suddenly, I started to laugh. A laugh that turned into tears. I had been jealous. I had suffered. I had compared myself to a non-existent mistress. Felt insecure about being old and ugly, inferior to her in every way, and it was all a paid performance.
That day, Ethan continued in a solemn voice. After you left, Daniel sat in the car watching your back in the rearview mirror. The actress tried to take his arm to comfort him. Following the script, he slapped her hand away, shouting,
“Get out!”
Then he buried his head in the steering wheel and started coughing violently. He coughed up blood, staining a white handkerchief red. He told me,
“Ethan, I’m such a bastard. I’ve hurt Laura. Seeing her cry tears me apart inside. I just want to get out of the car, hug her, and tell her I’m sorry, that I don’t want to divorce anymore. Let’s go home, honey.”
But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t.
