It Ended on the Decade

[If we had been a little braver back then...]

Tears rolled down my cheeks in an instant as a bitter smile formed on my lips.

What would being braver change?

Would I have been completely excluded?

I stayed with Samuel Moore as he clawed his way up from the wreckage of his family's bankruptcy. I stayed with him through the despair of losing both his parents. I stayed with him step by step until he built the success he has today.

For ten years, we shared every hardship. I thought we were the only ones for each other.

It turned out I was only a stand-in. I just happened to appear during the long years when he could not confess his love to the one he could never forget.

Trembling, I made my way to the furthest room inside our home.

The study.

In our decade of marriage, he had never let me set foot inside.

He had said it was where he placed his parents' and older brother's belongings. He said he needed a quiet place to remember them.

I believed him and never questioned it.

The door was unlocked and opened with a gentle push.

The study was decorated minimally. There was just one massive desk and a bookcase that reached the ceiling.

However, there were no photos of his parents or his brother, Alex.

Instead, the walls were covered with Rachel Taylor's pictures.

Rachel as a teenager, running along the shore in a white dress.

Rachel in college, smiling by a library window as she held her textbook.

Rachel in a wedding gown...

My eyes burned.

Through my tears, I noticed a diary on the desk.

I felt like I was falling into a freezing pit the second I opened it.

Rachel was Samuel's sister-in-law! She was Alex's wife!

[I saw her again today. She wore the dress Alex gave her. She looked beautiful. I wish that dress had been from me.]

[Alex said he is going to propose to her. I drank all night. I should be happy for him. Why does it hurt this much?]

[They got married. She became my sister-in-law. Every time I have to refer to her by that title, it hurts so much.]

Page after page, line after line. All of it was his hidden and raging love for Rachel.

He’d loved her long before Alex ever did, long before he loved me, and long before these ten wasted years of our marriage.

When I met Samuel, Alex was already gone. I knew nothing about the past.

So… Samuel had lied to me for ten whole years.

How many ten years does a person get in life to waste like this...

I could not read another word as I snapped the diary shut. I then picked up my phone and started to dial a familiar number. I wanted to demand answers. I wanted to ask what these decades meant.

Halfway through, I stopped.

The answer was already before me.

Asking again would only invite self-humiliation.

I started laughing and couldn't stop, tears welling in my eyes and rolling down again. They hit the floor, as if they could pierce through the floor... Just like how the sorrow had pierced through my heart.

My eyes were red as I smashed the entire wall of photos.

Frames shattered and glass fragments sprayed everywhere, just like how my heart shattered along with them.

I did not know how long it took, but I only stopped when there was not a single intact smile left on the wall. Then, I collapsed on the floor with no more strength left in me.

After a long time, I called my best friend Brenda Harris. "Brenda, I'm getting a divorce. You said you needed a partner in Floraland, right? I'm coming to see you."

Brenda froze for a second, then she supported me without hesitation. "I'll go ahead and get your ticket. You can leave in three days."

After I hung up, I called my private lawyer and told him to draft the divorce agreement immediately.