“Three hundred dollars for rent just went through. Thanks, Claire.”

A text popped up on Claire’s phone from a contact saved as “Mark.”

I grabbed the phone before she could react and froze.

“Rent?” I asked. “You’ve been telling me every month that money was from your side job.”

Her face went stiff. She reached for the phone, trying to take it back.

“He was my sister Emily’s husband,” Claire said quickly. “After Emily died, he was left with two kids. I was only trying to help.”

My hand brushed against the anniversary gift in my pocket, and something inside me went cold.

“Which apartment is he paying rent for?”

Her lips parted, but it took her a long time to answer.

When she finally did, she gave me the name of a neighborhood.

My ears rang.

It was the downtown apartment my parents had left me. A spacious unit that could rent for ten thousand a month at market rate.

And she had leased it to her widowed brother-in-law for the absurdly low price of three hundred dollars.

Claire Whitman tried to snatch the phone back, but in her panic, she knocked over a whole pot of beef brisket soup.

I had spent three hours making that soup.

She loved it, so every year on our wedding anniversary, it was always on the table.

“Honey, please let me explain. I didn’t mean to hide it from you.”

She stepped over the mess on the floor and hurried toward me.

“But you know my sister Emily passed away three years ago. She left Mark with a son and a daughter.

“He doesn’t have a job, and he has to support himself and the kids. It’s been really hard for him...”

I tightened my grip on the phone and forced my voice to stay calm.

“So what exactly was your reason for keeping it from me?”

She stopped about three feet away from me.

Then she stammered, “I... I was afraid you’d misunderstand my relationship with Mark. I didn’t want to make you angry.”

I understood.

Mark had it hard, so she rented him an apartment worth ten thousand a month for only three hundred.

And I was petty and narrow-minded, so she had no choice but to hide the truth from me.

“How many years has he been renting it?”

“Three years. Since Emily died.”

“If it’s rent, then every weekend when you said you were going to help a friend with a part-time job, where were you actually going?”

Claire lowered her head, avoiding my eyes.

“To work overtime...”

“Lie again. There’s no overtime pay on any of your pay stubs.”

I tapped on the message, and the chat with Mark Lewis popped up.

Yesterday had been Sunday.

[Claire, Ben and Lily want sautéed lettuce. Can you teach me how to make it?]

She had replied within seconds.

[Mark, I’ll come over and make it for them. You’re not good in the kitchen. You might burn yourself.]

I kept scrolling.

There were records from almost every weekend morning before that.

[Claire, I want to buy Lily some underwear. Do you think this color looks nice?

I’ll come help you pick it out. Girls have sensitive skin, so the fabric matters more than the color.]

[Claire, I think Lily just got her first period. It’s not really appropriate for me to teach her about it. Can you come help?]

[Okay. I’ll be right there.]

Every conversation began with him calling for Claire and ended with her going over.

The screen was packed with messages. Just looking at them made me dizzy.

“Claire, our daughter wanted to eat a meal you made with your own hands. Every time she asked, you said you were too busy.

“A few days ago, Daisy had a fever. All she wanted was your egg fried rice. I made it for her several times, but she refused to eat it. I had no choice but to search every restaurant I could find before I finally found one that tasted close enough to yours and coaxed her into eating.

“And yet every weekend, you’re over there cooking for him and helping him with everything?”

Claire swallowed without realizing it.

“Honey, he’s a grown man raising a daughter. There isn’t a woman around him, so a lot of things are inconvenient...”

“Then where did my woman go?

“You went over there to help him. Was there any woman left by my side to take care of Daisy?”

I couldn’t stand hearing her use Mark’s misery as an excuse. I grabbed a pair of chopsticks and flung them at her face.

She panicked, but even when the chopsticks hit her, she didn’t dodge.

“Noah, don’t be angry. Daisy is still asleep...”

Suddenly, I found it almost funny.

So she did remember we had a child.

Then who exactly was this man raising a daughter alone with no woman around him?

The anger in my chest kept climbing. I picked up my own phone and called the property management office for that building.

Claire immediately tried to grab it.

I turned away from her and quickly finished explaining the situation, but the person on the other end let out a surprised sound.

“Mr. Bennett, the people living in your unit aren’t a family of three. It’s a family of six.”

For a moment, I remembered the one time I had met Mark’s family when Emily was still alive.

I went numb from my scalp to the soles of my feet.

“Claire, is this what you meant by a man raising his children alone? With no woman around him?”

Claire’s face flushed, then went pale. She looked as if she was scrambling for an explanation.

But the facts were right in front of us. After hesitating for a long time, she could only say, “His parents and his brother were worried about him, and the house in their hometown is too old...”

“Claire.”

I cut her off through gritted teeth, each word sharp and deliberate.

“Your mother’s place back home is tiny and drafty. She sleeps curled up in the corner of her bed every night, but she refused to move in with us because she didn’t want to bother us.

“Just yesterday, she stepped into a puddle and hurt her leg. A neighbor had to take her to the village clinic.

“And now you’re telling me you moved Mark’s entire family of six into my massive downtown apartment, a place worth ten thousand a month on the rental market, for three hundred dollars?

“Is Mark out of his mind, or are you?”

Claire panicked.

“She fell? How bad is it? What did the doctor say?”

I gave a cold laugh and turned toward the bedroom.

“If you actually cared, you wouldn’t have shut off your phone because you found it annoying when the neighbor tried to reach you.”

Behind me, she called out, “Noah, I’ll take care of things with my mom... As for Mark, I really didn’t mean to hide it from you. Don’t keep all that anger bottled up. It’s bad for your health.”

I didn’t stop walking.

“Clean up the kitchen and the living room. You can sleep on the couch tonight.”

After closing the bedroom door, I looked down and took the ring out of my pocket.

It was supposed to be my anniversary gift to her.

I had planned to surprise her tonight, then use the occasion to talk to her about bringing her mother to the city.

The house back home was too run-down. It wasn’t a suitable place for an elderly woman to live.

Who would have thought that before we even took a bite of dinner, I would see Mark’s message?

Our seventh wedding anniversary was ruined just like that.

The next morning, when I came out of the bedroom, the living room had been restored to normal. Claire had gone to work.

There was an apology from her on my phone.

But every one of those dozen or so messages was about how hard Mark had it.

I didn’t reply. I took Daisy to kindergarten first, then drove to the downtown apartment complex.

After I entered the passcode wrong three times, the door was yanked open impatiently from the inside.

“Who is it? You’re breaking into someone’s home in broad daylight now?”

I stared at the scruffy man in front of me and recognized him as Mark’s younger brother, Ryan Lewis.

Mark came out of the kitchen. The moment he saw me, his eyes widened.

“What are you doing here?”

Ryan glanced me up and down.

“Mark, is this a friend of yours? He’s got no manners. Who goes to someone else’s place and punches in the passcode instead of ringing the bell?”

He rolled his eyes and walked into the largest master bedroom.

Mark quickly put his daughter down. His eyes flickered away from mine, and he looked visibly uneasy.

“Noah Bennett, what brings you here?”

I stepped inside with a dark expression and glanced around the apartment.

“Do I need to report to anyone before coming back to my own home?”

The moment I finished speaking, someone entered the passcode at the door.

Claire walked in as if she had done it a hundred times before. She was just about to change her shoes when she saw me, and her whole body went stiff.

“Why... why are you here?”

At that moment, the whole thing was so absurd that I didn’t even know where to begin.

“Claire, why are you here?

“At this hour, shouldn’t you be at work?”

She froze, unable to answer.

Mark hurried over to smooth things over.

“Noah, don’t blame Claire. I asked her to come. The bedding at home... it needed changing, and I was worried I’d buy the wrong kind...”

Before he could finish, he shut his own mouth.

He couldn’t choose underwear for Lily, and now he couldn’t choose a bedding set either?

Whether it was really because of the bedding, he knew better than anyone.

Claire tugged at my sleeve.

“Honey, let’s go home first. I’ll explain everything slowly.”

I met her eyes and asked, “Which part do you want to explain?”

“Which part, Claire? The apartment? The job? The school place? Or the fact that you had time for Mark’s children while Daisy was sick in the hospital?”

Her expression changed. While she stood there, hesitating and lost for words, the door to the second bedroom opened.

Mark’s parents came out, no longer dressed in the shabby clothes I remembered from the countryside. They were polished and well dressed, and they gave me a disdainful glance.

“Oh. It’s the younger Whitman girl’s husband.”

“I heard this place belongs to you? You’re awfully young to be this selfish. Your wife already gave us the apartment to live in, and you still have the nerve to ask for three hundred dollars?”

I turned and shoved Claire away with all my strength.

So that was how she wanted to play it.

She was the one who had rented out the apartment, but she had told them I was the one asking for rent.

She got to look generous, while I became the petty one.

“Noah, let’s go home first. Once we’re home, I’ll tell you everything from start to finish.”

Claire clutched my wrist tightly, her eyes full of pleading.

But was she pleading for her own dignity, or for Mark?

When she saw my expression grow colder and colder, she made up her mind and tried to drag me out first.

Instead, I suddenly kicked over the umbrella stand by the entrance.

Then I pointed at the blue employee badge hanging on the wall, my voice trembling.

“You gave him my job too?

“So this is what you meant when you said he didn’t have a job?

“Claire, how much have you lied to me about?”

For that job, I had kept working remotely even while I was in the hospital recovering from surgery.

The moment I was discharged, I went straight back to work. I took care of Daisy while handling my job at the same time.

I had practically worked myself to death to rise from an entry-level position to associate director.

But three years ago, over dinner, Claire suddenly told me the company was cutting staff.

I was one of the people being let go.

She had apologized to me with red eyes, saying that although she was the HR director, she had no power over the board’s decision.

I felt sorry that she was caught in the middle. Even though I was deeply reluctant to leave, I comforted her instead.

“It’s okay, honey. This way, I can stay home and focus on taking care of Daisy.”

Over the next few years, I thought more than once that once Daisy started elementary school, I would go out and find a job again.

But today, I saw the employee badge that should have belonged to me, now bearing Mark’s name.

Judging by the employee number, his start date was two months after Emily died.

It was the very same month I left.

She had lied to me again.

The company had never laid me off.

She had wanted to give my position to Mark.

Now that she could no longer hide this either, Claire lowered her voice.

“Honey, I’m begging you. Let’s go home first...”

But I stood there without moving.

At this hour, she wasn’t at work because of Mark’s call.

And Mark wasn’t at work either.

Why?

At the thought, I let out a cold laugh.

“Claire, this is an associate director position in the creative department, and you actually dared to let him hold the title and collect a salary without showing up?”

“When I was working there, I was sick and asked you for leave, and you wouldn’t even approve it.”

Maybe my voice sounded too desolate, because Mark walked over.

The moment he opened his mouth, he sighed, his face twisted with distress.

“Noah, don’t blame Claire. She just felt that after Emily passed away, it wasn’t easy for me to raise two kids on my own. Besides, men and women are different. She did it for me, for Lily...”

I couldn’t bear another word and cut him off.

“Mark, you take more than twenty thousand a month for doing nothing, pay three hundred dollars to move your whole family of six into a place like this, and have my wife come over to help with every big and small thing.

“Exactly which part of your life is hard?”

“Noah!” Seeing Mark’s face turn pale, Claire grabbed me hard and dragged me out without caring how it looked.

She didn’t let go until we reached the entrance of the complex.

Then she put on that pleading expression again.

“Honey, please listen to me. I had no choice.

“After Emily died, Mark was devastated. He kept threatening to kill himself. I did all this to keep him stable.”

I stared straight at her until the look in my eyes made her skin crawl.

“When Emily died, you and your mother fell apart. I was the one who handled the entire funeral.

“I know better than you what state he was in.”

A man who had truly been devastated by the loss of his wife would not have taken his six-month-old daughter to trendy cafés for check-in photos.

If he had truly wanted to kill himself, he would not have slept until late morning while I was so exhausted I nearly collapsed, then pretended to wipe away a tear and say, “Noah, you’ve worked hard.”

Even now, she was still lying to me.

Today marked the eighth year of our marriage. Our daughter was six and a half.

And yet, for the first time, I looked at her seriously.

I wondered what exactly was going on inside the heart of this woman I had once loved so sincerely.

At that point, Claire seemed to deflate.

She lowered her head, kicked a stone by the curb, and gave up pretending.