My Ex-husband Threw A $10,000 Card At Me While Leaving Me For A Younger Woman. Seven Years Later, I Finally Checked The Balance. Why Was There $2 Million In The Account?

I got up, trembling, and shuffled toward the window. The binoculars were fixed on a homemade wooden stand, aimed outward through a small gap in the bars.

I leaned down and looked through the eyepiece. The image that appeared made my heart stop for an instant.

Through the lenses, I could see with perfect clarity the balcony of my old rented apartment across the street and the bus stop where I waited every morning. From this angle, I could see my entire life.

I could see myself hanging laundry in the morning, cooking noodles at night, sitting thoughtfully, combing my hair by the window. I pulled my eyes away from the binoculars and took a few steps back.

A chill ran down my spine, not of fear, but of an overwhelming emotion. “He spent most of the day sitting right here,” Ethan said, pointing to the old wooden chair, its paint worn away.

“When the pain was unbearable, he would lie down. As soon as he felt a little better, he would sit back down, his eyes glued to these binoculars. He said that only by seeing you go to work and come home safe and sound could he close his eyes and get a little sleep.”

I caressed the cold binoculars, tears blurring my vision again. I remembered those days when I felt alone and helpless in this big city.

I pitied myself for coming and going alone with no one to pick me up or ask how I was. But I didn’t know that there were always eyes watching me silently from a distance.

When I stumbled, when the rain soaked me, a man across the street was suffering, wanting to run and protect me but powerless. He could only grip the arms of the chair until his knuckles were white.

“One day it was pouring rain,” Ethan recounted, his gaze distant.

“You were coming home late from work without an umbrella, running from the bus stop to the house. He saw it and, in his panic, tried to go out to give you an umbrella. But he barely took two steps before he collapsed. His legs were already too weak. He couldn’t walk. He lay there on the floor pounding it with his fists and crying like a child. He cursed his useless legs. He called himself trash. He said to me, ‘My wife is getting soaked, Ethan. She’s going to get sick. What do I do?'”

Ethan’s story recreated the tragic scene before my eyes. I imagined Daniel—my proud Daniel—lying helplessly on the dirty floor, crying because he couldn’t give his wife an umbrella.

His concern wasn’t sweet words or expensive gifts; it was the torment of being unable to protect the person he loved. I picked up the binoculars and hugged them to my chest as if they were a part of him.

“Daniel, you were such a fool! You endured and watched in silence for what?” “You used the clumsiest, most painful way to love me, to be by my side in your final days—separated by a street, but like two parallel worlds that could never touch.”

I stood frozen by the rusty window, my trembling hands clutching the cold binoculars. Outside, the afternoon sun had set, leaving only the yellowish glow of streetlights on the asphalt.

Through the lenses, the world across the street appeared sharp—so close I felt I could reach out and touch it. My tears welled up again, blurring the image, but the memories returned sharper than ever.

I remembered the stormy days huddled at the bus stop, cold and filled with self-pity, cursing my unfair life and my unfaithful husband. I remembered the nights I came home late, walking nervously down the empty alley, always with a sense of unease as if someone were following me.

Back then, I thought it was a hallucination brought on by loneliness or the fear of a woman learning to live alone. It turned out it wasn’t a hallucination; it was Daniel’s eyes.

“He sat here,” Ethan said, patting the worn wooden chair. His voice was low, as if afraid to disturb the soul of the departed.

“Every day, as soon as he woke up, he would drag himself to this chair. When the pain was too much to sit, he would lie on the floor, but his hands would still be clutching the binocular stand. He knew your schedule better than you did—what time you left, what you were wearing, if you forgot your umbrella. He knew everything.”

I put down the binoculars and turned to look at the empty chair. I imagined a gaunt Daniel, his face contorted by physical pain, but his eyes bright, fixed on those inert lenses just to see the figure of the woman he had pushed away.

He was there across the street, witnessing all my joys and sorrows, my curses and my tears for him. But he chose a cruel silence.

“There were days you got sick and didn’t leave the house,” Ethan continued, his gaze distant.

“Daniel would pace anxiously in this tiny apartment like a wounded animal. He wanted to call you. He wanted to cross the street to see how you were, but he was afraid you’d see his ghostly appearance. So he would call me. He would force me to pretend I was just passing by to buy you medicine and soup and bring it to you. He insisted over and over that I not mention his name—to just say I was an old friend who happened to be in the area.”

I was stunned. The memory of that hot soup and the bag of medicine came flooding back.

At the time, I was surprised Ethan knew I was sick, but my fatigue and my immense pride kept me from asking further. I accepted it and shut the door in his face.

I ate that soup and took those pills, never knowing that a few hundred yards away, a man was sitting in this chair, sighing with relief when he saw the light in my room turn on. “Did he… did he watch me like this for three months?”

I asked, my voice broken by a sob. “Watching the miserable life he had condemned me to? Did he feel happy? Satisfied?”

Ethan shook his head, a bitter smile on his lips. “Happy? How could he be, Laura? Every time he saw you struggling, he would beat his chest. He’d say he was useless, that he claimed to love his wife but was letting her suffer. But he preferred you to suffer a little materially than to suffer your whole life over his death. He accepted being a helpless spectator just so you could play the role of a strong woman in the drama of your life.”

I caressed the cold back of the chair, feeling as if his warmth was still there. “Daniel, you fool. You thought you were protecting me, but you were punishing yourself with the harshest sentence—the sentence of separation in life, the sentence of watching the person you love most suffer without being able to help.”

“You turned love into a silent, painful sacrifice, and me, unknowingly, into the most callous person in the world.”

Ethan bent down under the bed and pulled out an old tin box, the kind once used for cookies. He opened it.

Inside was a notebook with a dark brown leather cover. The leather was worn at the corners but carefully preserved.

Ethan handed it to me with both hands, with a reverent gesture as if giving me a sacred relic. “This is what he left,” Ethan said quietly.

“He had no one to talk to, so he poured everything in here. In his last days, when his throat hurt so much he couldn’t speak, this pen was his only friend.”

I took the journal. The smell of old paper mixed with disinfectant hit me—a scent of farewell and nostalgia.

I opened it, trembling. Daniel’s handwriting was so familiar and painful.