“Can you feel the calluses on my hand?”
I suddenly asked Seraphina.
She caressed the calluses on my palm, saying helplessly,
“Julian, I know you’ve worked so hard. I won’t let you work this hard anymore.”
“Your illness was fake, wasn’t it?”
My tone was firm. Seraphina couldn’t utter a single word in rebuttal.
A chilling sensation washed over me like a tide.
“I actually had a good job offer after college. If I had taken that job, would my palms not have these calluses now?”
I was asking Seraphina, but in reality, I was asking myself.
If I hadn’t felt pity for Seraphina and brought her home, would my life have been completely different?
“I’m sorry.”
Seraphina’s tears fell on the back of my hand. I blinked, yet inexplicably felt like laughing.
“Are you playing the victim again? Hoping I’ll be soft–hearted and stay by your side, just like I did back then, right?”
Seraphina sobbed, unable to form a complete sentence, only shaking her head.
“But I don’t regret choosing you, because without you, I wouldn’t have met Chloe.”
Hearing me mention our child, Seraphina’s pain was unbearable. She clutched her heart, writhing in agony on the floor before me.
A broken sob escaped her throat. I inexplicably thought of the pampered poodle I’d seen with Seraphina that day at the police station.
“Do you know, Chloe wrote in her diary the day before she died.”
“She wrote: Grandma coughed up blood today. Our family is working so, so hard for Mom’s illness. Daddy comes home very late every day, too tired to even talk to me much. I need to study harder too, so if Mom is happy, her illness will get better quickly!”
I spoke every word that was carved into my mind.
With each word, a piece of my heart was torn away.
My sweet, well–behaved daughter, whose life was snatched away by a car accident, not even a complete body left behind.
Seraphina knelt before me, pounding the ground with her fists.
“Please, stop talking, stop talking!”
Looking at Seraphina’s twisted face, I felt no satisfaction.
I slowly knelt down, wanting to see the tears in the corners of her eyes more clearly.
“When Chloe was mocked as a beggar by her classmates, did you ever, for even a moment, think about revealing the truth? When my mom collapsed from exhaustion at her needlework for you, did you ever, for a single moment, want to confess that you weren’t sick?”
Seraphina clutched at her hair her ev
*
Seraphina clutched at her hair, her eyes bloodshot as she looked at me.
“Julian! Believe me! I never meant to keep lying to you, I just… I was afraid that if I told the truth, my parents wouldn’t let you into the Sterling home.”
The expected answer.
I should have known what kind of person Seraphina truly was. She was selfish and self–serving, always pushing all responsibility onto others.
Even now, she still didn’t think she was wrong.
“Seraphina, don’t you understand what I’m saying? From beginning to end, *you* were the one who made the mistake. It has nothing to do with your parents, and nothing to do with Dominic.”
“If you had ever, for one moment, felt pity for my and my mother’s sacrifices, felt pity for the disdain little Chloe endured, you wouldn’t have kept this a secret until I discovered it!”
