Chapter 2Strangers in the Night Wind

Getting married to Eric had been a dream. Everything was so easy, so perfect. From meeting his parents to the engagement party, they had always looked at me with such genuine approval, telling everyone how lucky their son was to have found such a hardworking, dedicated woman.

I still remember my first time at their house. Eric’s father, after three glasses of whiskey, had clapped me on the shoulder and boomed, "Mia, you marrying our Eric means you're our daughter now. We'll treat you like our own."

Back then, Eric was always by my side, his eyes filled with a nervous energy as he’d try to block me from drinking too much, secretly squeezing my hand under the table and mouthing, "Take it easy."

He told me he loved quiet, peaceful places, so I took all my savings and bought this sprawling house, a place worth millions. Eric was ecstatic. He insisted on decorating it exactly how I liked.

I didn't really care about the details, so I let him have free rein. But he involved me in everything. He ran around tirelessly, picking out deep blue curtains because he knew it was my favorite color, insisting on a durable gray couch, and even choosing the wedding photo for the main wall—the one where he said I had the goofiest, most beautiful smile.

"This is our home now," he’d said, his fingers tracing the edge of the picture frame, his eyes shining. "Once you're settled in your job overseas, I'll come join you."

But when I finally secured a permanent contract with the company, he changed his tune.

"My parents are getting older, Mia. If I leave, there'll be no one to look after them," he’d said over a crackling phone line. "Besides, I just got promoted to department head. It's a terrible time to quit. Just wait a little longer. I'll come over as soon as I finish this big project."

And I believed him.

I used to think that distance was no match for love, that as long as our hearts were connected, we could overcome anything. I threw myself into my work, sending him the majority of my paycheck so he could buy supplements for his parents and nice clothes for himself.

Every time he received the money, he'd laugh and say, "It's more than enough," but then a package would arrive at my apartment with cured sausages from our hometown. "Don't you dare neglect yourself out there," the note would read.

Thinking back on it now, maybe he wasn’t the one who made them.

Just like his "bad connection" during our video calls was probably just an excuse to hide the sound of a crying baby.

And the gifts I sent, returned because the "storage closets are full," weren't full at all—he just didn’t want another woman’s belongings in his house.

Even every rushed "I miss you" might not have been born from longing, but from a desperate need to cover something up.

I stood in the living room of my own house, staring at the large family portrait hanging on the wall.

Eric was leaning against Claire, and their son, Leo, sat between them. All three were smiling, their happiness a blinding glare. The frame holding the picture was the birthday gift I had sent him last year. He'd told me it was "too expensive, too precious to use."

It wasn’t that he couldn’t bear to use it. He just didn’t want a gift from me hanging in their home.

Footsteps echoed on the stairs. Eric’s mother came down carrying a platter of fruit, her smile strained. "Mia, dear, have some fruit. It's all your old favorites."

I didn’t move. I looked her straight in the eye. "Leo… is he Eric's son?"

I wasn't blind. I knew the answer. But a weak, cowardly part of me still wanted to believe that all those beautiful memories weren't just a carefully constructed lie, a performance put on by his entire family just for me.

Her hand trembled, and a grape rolled off the plate, tumbling onto the floor. She scrambled to pick it up, her voice muffled. "The children… they're both very well-behaved…"

I closed my eyes. "He's seven." The pain was like a fist squeezing my heart. "That means he was born the year after I went abroad."

She froze, her head snapping up. The panic in her eyes was impossible to hide. "Mia, let me explain…"

"Explain what?" I laughed, a tight, strangled sound. "Explain how your entire family lied to me for eight years while I worked myself to the bone, sending my money back like an idiot to support another woman's husband and child? Or explain who he was thinking of every time I came home and he held me, telling me he loved me?"

Eric’s father emerged from his study and pulled his wife behind him, his face stern. "Mia, it's too late for all that now. Eric can't live like this anymore. You two… you should just get a divorce."

"A divorce?" I repeated the word, a bitter taste in my mouth. I suddenly remembered my wedding day, eight years ago, when this same man had stood before me, smiling, and said, "You take good care of my boy."

How could a heart change so much in just eight years?

"Claire was Eric’s high school sweetheart," his father said with a sigh, his tone laced with a bizarre sort of sympathy. "After you went abroad, Eric was all alone, and he went through a lot. Claire was the one who was there for him. They… they couldn’t help it."

Couldn't help it?

And what about me? All my struggles abroad, all the sleepless nights, all the days and years I spent counting down until I could come home—what was all that for?

I snatched a fruit knife from the table, not to hurt anyone, but just to have something solid to grip. The cold steel bit into my palm, but it did nothing to quell the fire raging inside me.

Just then, the sound of a car engine cut through the silence from the garden. Eric and Claire were back.