"Ada, I'm so sorry. Yell at me, hit me, whatever you want. Just please don't blame Cliff, okay?"

"I know these past weeks he's been at the hospital for me and not for your dad. But before he passed out, the only name on his lips was yours!"

My whole body went rigid. I ignored the taunt in her voice and kept my tone flat.

"I don't blame you. Take good care of him."

"But Ada, I don't know how to take care of anyone. I'm a sickly thing who can't even lift a finger. How am I supposed to look after him?"

She couldn't lift a finger, no. But she could make Clifford use my father as an excuse to sit with her, right under my nose.

One casual mention of some regret from her, and Clifford would drop my father in a heartbeat.

Which one mattered more had been settled long ago.

Every time Clifford put down his work to come sit with my father, my father would push him to put his career first, would tell me to be more understanding of him. Remembering those scenes made my nose sting.

The joke was on us. He'd played my father and me for fools, and we'd thought him a man of deep feeling and loyalty.

"I'm busy. I don't have time for your games."

"How can you be this cold? No wonder Cliff would rather stay with me than go back and perform the rites for your father!"

I ignored the smugness and hung up. I looked at Brendan.

"Brendan..."

Before I could finish, he said, firm:

"I'll perform the rites for Dad."

I turned my head away and wiped at the tears that came without permission.

Brendan fumbled to get me a tissue.

"Don't cry. He's not worth it. No worthless man is."

I shook my head and gave a bitter smile.

"I'm not crying over him. I'm crying because my father deserved better."

I was with Clifford for eight years, and for eight years he enjoyed my father's care.

Four years of tuition and support through college, an internship arranged at Southport's top firm after graduation. All of it was my father helping him.

Last year he wanted to start his own company. I emptied out every cent of my savings and it still wasn't enough.

It was my father who quietly took out the money he'd set aside for his own funeral, who told him to just go for it, that they'd have his back no matter what.

It wasn't until this last illness, when my father couldn't stop worrying about me, that he used his own regret over having no son to perform the rites to ask Clifford for a single promise.

His vows, and the patience of dropping his work to come to the hospital every day, had put my father and me completely at ease.

It never once occurred to us that all of it was a performance.

And that some promises are nothing but empty checks.

Just like how, year after year, he said he would marry me, and year after year found a different reason to put it off.

The first year after graduation, we were still young, no rush.

The second year, he was busy with work, no time to plan a wedding.

The third year I had everything ready, and he said he wanted to start his company, that he'd make me the envied Mrs. Rowe once he'd made his name.

The fourth year, with my father critically ill, he finally agreed to marry me.

But my father was gone now, and so was my love.

And I finally understood: he never married me for one simple reason. He didn't want to.

The pain of losing my father had left me numb to the loss of Clifford entirely.

Brendan held me for a moment, gently, then turned to go organize the procession.

Someone asked me,

"Ada, where's your fiancé? Without him to perform the rites, we can't move the casket!"

I stepped up to Brendan's side and told them all, calm:

"He isn't coming. From now on, Brendan is my father's son-in-law."

They weren't fools. No one asked anything more.

But the way they looked at me was full of pity and ache.

The funeral ended in a downpour. Soaked through and worn down by grief, I fainted at the cemetery.

Brendan hurried me to the hospital on his back.

After the doctor saw me, Brendan went to pay and pick up the medicine, and I headed for the restroom.

And there I collided with someone.

"Ah!"

The woman stumbled and dropped to the floor.

The impact sent me down too, the back of my head cracking hard against the fire hydrant beside me.

Warmth spilled out, and my vision blurred.

But not enough to keep me from seeing Clifford leap off the hospital bed and rush straight at me.

On instinct, I reached out to him.

He stepped right past me and lifted the woman off the ground, his face full of tenderness.

"Lindy, are you all right? Did it hurt?"

Then, without so much as a glance back, he snapped at me coldly.

"Are you blind, or in some hurry to get yourself killed—"

I drew my hand back and let out a small laugh at myself.

At how much I'd flattered myself.

Clifford went rigid, turned, and saw it was me, and his face darkened at once.

"Ada? It's you?"

Lindsay leaned against his chest, fighting back tears.

"Cliff, don't blame Ada. She cursed at me, she pushed me, and I deserve it. It's my fault you nearly died!"

With that, she slapped herself hard across the face and apologized to me.

"Ada, you're right. I deserve to die!"

I hadn't said a word, and already she was putting on her show.

And of course Clifford believed her.

He couldn't see my white face, couldn't see that I'd fallen too, and certainly didn't see the blood soaking into my black mourning dress.

He only raised his hand and slapped me.

"When Lindy said you refused to come to the hospital to be with me, that you cursed at her, I didn't believe her! But I never imagined you could be this vicious. You actually came all the way here just to pick a fight with her!"

"Do you have any idea that the smallest injury could kill her right now?"

"Are you taking your father's death out on her?"

"If you're angry, come at me. Why torment Lindy?"

His three questions, one after another, made me want to laugh. Laugh at eight years of devotion given to the wrong man.

"Don't laugh! Say something!"

I opened my mouth and only then tasted the rust filling it.

My throat hurt like I was swallowing razor blades, and I couldn't force out a single word.

Clifford took my silence for admission.

He grabbed me by the collar and forced me down.

"Apologize to Lindy! Or don't blame me for refusing to perform the rites at your father's funeral!"

Brendan came back with the medicine and saw me forced to my knees on the floor.

His eyes went wild as he shoved Clifford away and tried to lift me up.

Then his hand found the blood on my back.

Both his face and Clifford's changed, and the two of them moved at the same time to hold me.

Lindsay suddenly clutched her head, gagging without stop.

"Cliff... my head hurts..."

Clifford instantly pulled his hand back and scooped up the already unconscious Lindsay.

But Brendan had already lifted me first and was rushing me toward the emergency room.

"Doctor, quick, help her!"

Before the doctor could even examine me, Clifford pushed his way into the room carrying Lindsay, roaring, his eyes red.

"Doctor, see her first! She has late-stage brain cancer. Someone deliberately shoved her down, and now she's gagging and her head hurts and she's passed out!"

The doctor looked at the unconscious Lindsay and quickly took over.

But he still found a moment to call an intern to clean my wound and stop the bleeding first.

The intern took us to the room next door, and the moment she saw the gash on the back of my head, deep enough to show bone, she flinched on instinct.

"I can't handle a wound like this. I'll go get you another doctor!"

The one who came was Dr. Lambert, the same doctor who'd written up my medicine earlier.

He knew I was allergic to anesthetic, and he looked at me with some difficulty.

"I'll use acupuncture anesthesia to dull the pain, but it may still hurt a lot. Can you bear it?"

I nodded hard.

Even braced for it, when the needle and thread passed through the skin at the back of my head, the pain left my whole body trembling.

Dr. Lambert couldn't work, so he had Brendan hold me tight.

By the time the twenty-four stitches were done, my face had no color left in it from the pain.

Dr. Lambert told Brendan, "Take good care of your wife. Don't let her step out the door and come back hurt again!"

Clifford walked in just in time to hear that.

The worry on his face vanished in an instant.

His expression black, he strode over and yanked hard at me, trying to pull me out of Brendan's arms.

But no matter how he pulled, I wouldn't budge.

Watching me cling to Brendan with everything I had, he felt a fire scorching in his chest.

"Ada, your father isn't even cold in the ground, and you've got time to throw yourself at another man? What do you take me for?!"

"Or is this your way of goading me into going back and performing the rites at your father's funeral?"

I looked at Clifford coldly, and with everything I had left, I let the words drift out:

"My father is already buried. No need to trouble yourself."

He stared at me, disbelief all over his face.

"That's impossible! If I wasn't there to perform the rites, how could he be buried? Have you forgotten your father's dying wish?"

His accusation made me want to cry and laugh at once.

Cry, because he still remembered my father's wish.

Laugh, because he was the one who broke his promise, and yet he had the nerve to question me.

Brendan kicked him hard in the shin.

"You animal. Can't you see she's sick? Can't you see she's hurt?"

The pain lit the fury he'd been holding down.

"If she hadn't been vicious enough to shove Lindy, how would she have fallen on her own? She brought this on herself! If Lindy weren't so forgiving, she'd already be locked up for assault!"

So Lindsay faking a faint was fine, and my real injury was something I'd brought on myself.

Meeting my cold stare, something in Clifford turned uneasy, and out of pure instinct he reached to grab me again.

His hand caught the wound they'd just stitched closed.

I couldn't hold it back. The pain sent the tears rolling down my face.

Brendan ignored him and lifted a hand to wipe them away.

Clifford, furious, slapped Brendan's hand aside, seized him by the collar, and demanded coldly,

"When did the two of you get together behind my back?"

A dirty heart sees dirt in everything.

I had no strength to explain, and no wish to. My head hurt so badly it felt ready to split.

The room kept going dark at the edges.

So I simply let myself sink into the endless black.

But somewhere in that black, I thought I heard someone screaming,

"Stop hitting him!"

When I woke again, I was in a hospital room.

Brendan sat by my bed, the corner of his mouth and his cheek all bruised.

Clifford stood off to the side like a doorman, his own face marked up, a dried smear of nosebleed down his shirt that was hard to look at.

I understood at once. They had fought.

Seeing me awake, Clifford spoke first.

"Ada, you go apologize to Lindy, and I'll come back and perform the rites for your father!"

Then he pointed at Brendan.

"And you. If you don't want a lawsuit, kneel and apologize, then get lost back to your country!"

Brendan scraped his chair back and stood, fist clenched. I forced him back down by the hand.

I looked at Clifford, cold.

"Brendan and I did nothing wrong. We won't apologize. And my father doesn't need you to perform his rites anymore."

Clifford let out a scornful laugh.

"I'm as good as a son to your father. Who else is there to perform the rites but me? Don't tell me you're pinning your hopes on him. Is he even worthy?"

I had just nodded when Lindsay came rushing into the room, dropped to her knees at my bedside, and sobbed,

"Ada, I'm sorry. Everything is my fault, all of it. I never should have gotten sick! No, I should just die of it, then the two of you wouldn't be fighting over me..."

Clifford pulled her up at once.

"Lindy, you did nothing wrong. Don't you kneel! The dead don't matter more than the living. Who doesn't understand that?"

Her tears turned to a smile, which she forced back down.

"Cliff, it's all right if my wish goes unfinished. Take good care of Ada, then go home with her for the funeral."

Her thoughtfulness moved him so much his eyes shone with tears, the corners of his mouth curving up.

"That's my Lindy, always the sensible one! Not like some people, staging a whole scene just to fight for attention!"

I looked steadily at the man in front of me, and he felt terrifyingly like a stranger.

When my father was putting money and effort into him, no matter how big anything else was, nothing mattered more than my father.

Now my father was barely gone, and already he'd decided the dead didn't matter, and that my injury was some ploy to win his attention.

It was never that my father didn't matter. It was that my father had nothing left to offer him.

I saw it all clearly now, and I turned to Brendan, full of guilt.

"Does it hurt?"

The smile Lindsay had coaxed onto Clifford's face froze there in an instant.

"Ada Matthews! He hit me till my nose bled everywhere. Can't you see that? How can you still be worrying about him?"

He couldn't see that I was hurt. So what gave him the right to demand I worry about him?

Calmly I looked at Lindsay's hand, dabbing at the corner of his mouth.

"Brendan is my fiancé. If I don't worry about him, should I worry about you, my ex-fiancé instead?"

"Ada Matthews, you really are something, making a scene over a little thing like this. Is it worth it?"

So carrying out my father's dying wish was a little thing.

"It's worth it!"

Clifford saw I wasn't joking, and his tone cooled.

"Then go on making your scene. I won't play along!"

"As it happens, I need a suitable role to be at Lindy's side for the nine things she has left to do. If you still want me to perform your father's rites, if you still want our wedding to go ahead on schedule, then quit while you're ahead!"

"Otherwise, the rites and the wedding both get put off indefinitely!"

"As for your precious Brendan, if he doesn't kneel and apologize within three days, he can wait for my lawyer's letter!"

Clifford slammed the door and was gone.

Watching him walk away, the heartache I'd braced for never came.

Brendan started after him to give him another beating. I caught his hand and said softly,

"Don't dirty your hands over someone who isn't worth it."

"Our wedding. What day do you want it?"

Brendan closed his hand around mine.

"We'll register on the seventh day after your father passed, so he knows I don't break my promises. The wedding, any day you want."

So the wedding I'd begged for and never gotten in all those years could be had for the asking, from the man who truly loved me.

Seven days later, Brendan and I registered our marriage.

Fingers laced together, we walked out of the marriage registry office, meaning to head to the cemetery and tell my father the good news.

And there, of all people, we ran into Clifford.

He looked at the marriage certificate in our hands, and his eyes went red in an instant.

"Ada, what are the two of you doing here?"