Chapter 2

Josephine's eyes flickered, and her tone grew stiff. "I did send him out of the city back then. But his mother fell gravely ill recently, and her life hangs by a thread. As her son, can't he come back to care for her? That's only human."

"Only human?" Garrick found her words absurd. "So you let him come back. You let him get close to our kids. You even let them call him Papa? Josephine, do you take me for a fool?"

Josephine's brow furrowed deeper. "Don't twist my words like that! I'm the one who's been in the wrong from the start. I wronged you. I was unfaithful in our marriage. I let myself fall for Silas.

"But Silas did nothing wrong. The kids are close to him because he works as a piano teacher now. Last time, when we were choosing a piano teacher for Caleb and Ruby, they picked Silas themselves from a whole stack of teacher profiles.

"When I came back to the family, I promised you I would cut things off with him. Nothing improper has happened between us since. We're just ordinary friends now. You're the one who's being paranoid and oversensitive. Why go after him like this?"

Garrick watched her rush to defend herself while subtly shielding Silas, and the ache in his chest threatened to split him open.

He remembered the year he turned 16, outside the ballet studio. Josephine, a young woman in a white dress, had walked toward him with the sun at her back.

The tips of her ears had turned red, but her eyes had shone brightly as she spoke. "Garrick, I like you. Let's be together."

He remembered college, when something he had eaten had upset his stomach. She had skipped an important lab session to buy him medicine, then waited outside his dorm for an hour just so she could hand it to him herself.

He remembered the night she proposed on the campus field where they had first met. She had arranged candles into a giant heart and dropped to one knee, her voice breaking. "Gary, for the rest of my life, I will love only you. That will never change."

He remembered when she had just given birth to the twins. She had held the children close, her eyes red, and turned to him, just as exhausted as he was. "Hubby, from now on, the four of us will be together forever. I will love all of you forever."

The sweeter those old vows had once been, the deeper the current betrayal cut into his heart.

She had admitted to his face that she had fallen for another man. Worse, she had accused him of being paranoid and oversensitive for going after the very man who had torn his family apart.

"So, in your eyes, all I've done is go after him. But have you ever stopped to think about how I felt when I heard my own children call another man Papa? Have you spent even one second trying to see things from my perspective?" Garrick said, his voice hoarse and broken, yet carrying the calm of a man on the brink of despair

Josephine looked at his reddened eyes and his near-collapse, and she froze for a moment.

"I..." She opened her mouth but said nothing more.

Garrick closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. When he opened them again, only cold resolve remained in his gaze.

"Josephine, I'm giving you two choices. First, fire Silas. Right now, this instant. Make him disappear completely from my life and the children's lives. Second..." He paused, and every word seemed to drain what little strength he had left. "We get a divorce."

Divorce. He had finally said the word again.

Unlike the panic she had shown last time, Josephine's eyes were frighteningly calm. "No. Both kids are used to him now. He teaches them well. I already promised you I wouldn't cross any lines with him again. I have no reason to fire him when he's done nothing wrong."

She looked at him, her tone firm, with a faint trace of contempt he could barely detect. "Garrick, you don't need to keep threatening me with divorce. I know you. For the sake of the kids, you'd never actually go through with it."

'For the sake of the kids…' Garrick felt as though that single sentence had crushed his heart.

It was true. Last time, he had given her a second chance for the sake of the kids. For their sake, he had chosen to endure.

He had never imagined that this one weakness of his would become the very leverage she used against him, the reason she felt so secure in doing as she pleased.

When Josephine saw the broken look in his eyes as he stared at her, she pressed her fingers to her brow in irritation.

Her tone softened, though it carried the perfunctory air of someone eager to smooth things over. "Fine. I know the kids went too far today, too. I'll have them apologize to you. Let's just leave it at that. Don't keep dwelling on this, all right?"

She turned and waved toward the two children a short distance away. "Caleb, Ruby, come here and apologize to your father."

The two children shuffled over slowly, their reluctance plain on their faces.

Caleb pursed his lips. "We didn't even do anything wrong—"

"Caleb!" Josephine's tone sharpened.

Only then did Caleb mutter a grudging apology under his breath. "Sorry."

Ruby echoed quietly, "Sorry."

Neither apology carried a trace of sincerity.

Garrick watched them, overcome by bitter irony and grief.

…

By the time they walked out of the police station, Josephine's car was already waiting outside. She had Silas take the two children into the car first, then walked over to Garrick.

"Get in the car." Her tone had returned to its usual flatness, as though the argument moments earlier had never happened.

Garrick said nothing as he climbed into the back seat.

Inside the car, the air felt thick and still.

The two children clung to Silas, one on each side, and chattered away. Silas answered them with gentle patience, occasionally dabbing the sweat from Ruby's forehead with a tissue.

Josephine sat in the front passenger seat. Every so often, she turned back to join their conversation. She asked the children what they had learned at daycare that day and Silas how his mother was doing.

The four of them talked and laughed together, warm and at ease, as though they were the real family.

Meanwhile, Garrick sat among them like an outsider who had wandered in by mistake, completely shut out of their world.

He watched the streets rush past outside the window. The hollow place in his chest kept growing, and the coldness within it became almost unbearable.

Was this the family he had sacrificed so much to hold together, the one he had worked so hard to keep whole?

It was laughable.

Just as the car passed through an intersection, a sedan suddenly lost control, ran a red light, and came barreling straight toward them.

A violent crash shattered the silence.

Garrick felt his body fly upward before he slammed back down. Sharp pain shot through his forehead and several other parts of his body.

Warm liquid blurred his vision.

He had no idea how much time had passed before the piercing wail of an ambulance siren drew closer.

He heard the paramedics' voices.

"Over here! This one needs to get to the hospital right away!"

He heard a stretcher approach.

But the next moment, two small figures blocked its path.

"Save Silas first!" It was Caleb's voice, choked with tears but strangely insistent. "He's bleeding so much! He passed out!"