Caleb’s tears fell onto the back of my hand. I blinked, yet strangely wanted to laugh.
“Are you faking pitiful again? Hoping I’ll be soft–hearted like before and stay by your side, right?”
Caleb choked, unable to form a complete sentence, only shaking his head.
“But I don’t regret choosing you, because without you, I wouldn’t have met Chloe.”
Hearing me mention our child, Caleb’s heart ached unbearably. He clutched his chest, collapsing in agony before me.
A broken growl escaped his throat. I was inexplicably reminded of the Labrador I’d seen by Caleb’s side at the police station that
day.
“Do you know, Chloe wrote in her diary the day before she died?”
“She wrote: ‘Grandma coughed up blood today. Our family is working so, so hard for Daddy’s illness. Mommy comes home very late every day, too tired to even talk much with me. I need to study even harder, so if Daddy is happy, his illness will get better faster!“”
I recited every single word, each one etched into my mind.
With every sentence, a piece of my heart felt ripped out.
My sweet, sensible daughter, her life snatched away by a car crash, not even leaving a whole body.
Caleb knelt before me, pounding the ground with his fists.
“Please, stop talking, stop talking!”
3:25 PM
<
Watching Caleb’s face contort in pain, I felt no satisfaction whatsoever.
I slowly crouched down, wanting to see the tears in his eyes more clearly.
“When Chloe was mocked by her classmates as a beggar, did you ever, for a single moment, think about telling the truth? When my mom collapsed from exhaustion at the embroidery frame because of you, did you ever, for a second, consider confessing that you
weren’t sick?”
Caleb clutched his hair, his eyes bloodshot as he looked at me.
“Harper! Believe me! I never intended to keep lying to you. It’s just that I was afraid my parents wouldn’t let you into the Shen family home if I told the truth.”
The expected answer.
I should have known what kind of person Caleb truly was long ago. He was selfish, always pushing all the blame onto others.
Even now, he still didn’t think he had done anything wrong.
“Caleb, don’t you understand what I’m saying? From beginning to end, *you* were the one who made mistakes. It has nothing to do with your parents, and nothing to do with Victoria.”
“If you had ever, for one moment, felt sorry for the sacrifices my mother and I made, felt sorry for the disdain little Chloe endured,
you wouldn’t have kept this a secret until I discovered it myself!”
