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?
But then he retreated into his shell of self-pity. His love was both noble and mundane, generous and selfish in a moving way.
“He seemed like a good guy,” The next paragraph was written in a clumsier script as if he were forcing himself to accept reality.
“If he’s a good person, if he can take care of Laura in my place, I should be happy. I’m about to die. Laura needs a shoulder to lean on. But why does my heart hurt so much? Daniel, you’re a coward. You say you want her to be happy, but you can’t stand to see her happy with someone else. You’re selfish. You deserve to die.”
I broke down sobbing, my tears soaking the page. “Daniel, you fool! So childish! Jealous of the whole world, but you didn’t dare to be jealous of your own fate.”
“You called yourself selfish, but what selfish person would accept watching from the shadows as the one they love is cared for without daring to step out and ruin it all?”
“He broke his water glass that day,” Ethan intervened, his voice tinged with sadness and a sigh.
“He called me to come over. He made me investigate who that guy with the glasses was. He said if he was a good man, he’d let it go, but if he was a womanizer, he’d arrange for someone to teach him a lesson. I looked at him and I didn’t know whether to laugh or get angry. A guy on the verge of death and still worried about protecting the wife he himself had pushed away.”
I closed the journal and hugged it to my chest. The jealousy of a dying man might sound ridiculous, but it was the clearest proof of the love that still burned in him.
He never let me go, never stopped loving me for a second. He just hid that love, buried it deep in his heart along with his physical pain, so that I could move on freely.
But he didn’t know that the freedom he granted me was so empty and cold without his warmth. I kept turning the pages of the journal, but towards the end it became harder to read.
Daniel’s writing was no longer firm and neat but shaky and irregular. In many places, the ink had bled and the pen had pierced the paper.
These were signs that his strength was failing, that the hands that had signed multi-million dollar contracts could now barely hold a pen. “Date: It hurts too much today. Feels like my bones are shattering into pieces. I’ve had two shots of morphine, but they do nothing. Painkillers are like water to me now. Ethan told me to check into the hospital so they can monitor me, but I shook my head. What for? The end is already written. Here, even though it’s cramped, at least I can see Laura’s window. In the hospital, those four cold white walls would kill me before the cancer does.”
I caressed those trembling letters, feeling his helplessness. Morphine—a name foreign to me, but it was his only solace in those days.
I remembered my sleepless nights worrying about money, never knowing that just across the street, my husband was battling excruciating pain. He was resorting to powerful painkillers just to get some intermittent sleep.
“Date: I had another pain crisis last night. I bit down on the towel so I wouldn’t scream. I was afraid the neighbors would hear me, that my desperate screams would cross the street and wake Laura up. I’m a coward—a little pain and I already want to cry. But it really hurts, Ethan. It hurts so much. I want to take a knife and cut my own leg off. But then I think, if I were a cripple, I’d be so ugly. Laura would be scared to death to see me. Better to just endure.”
Ethan sat beside me, his head bowed, his voice choked. “There were nights I’d go to see him and find him curled up in a ball on the floor, soaked in sweat. He wouldn’t let me turn on the light. He wanted to be in the dark. He’d tell me, ‘Don’t turn it on. I don’t want you to see me cry.’ I’d touch his forehead and it was ice cold. His whole body would be shaking as if he had malaria.”
“I wanted to take him to the ER but he refused flatly. He’d cover my mouth with his hand and whisper, ‘Don’t make any noise. Laura’s a light sleeper. What if she hears us?'”
I listened to Ethan, feeling my heart being squeezed. “Daniel, you endured all that for the stupid fear of waking me up?”
“You protected my sleep, my false peace, with your own physical torment. You considered me your everything, but you treated yourself like nothing.”
“Date: What I fear most is delirium. Yesterday, Ethan told me that with the high fever, I kept calling Laura’s name. I’m so scared—scared that in a moment of unconsciousness, I’ll grab the phone and call her, that I’ll start crying and begging her to come back. I’ve already told Ethan if he sees me losing control, he should tie me down or give me a sedative to put me to sleep. Under no circumstances can I contact Laura. I’ve played the villain this far; I can’t fail at the end. Laura has to hate me. Only then can she live well.”
Reading the last line, I could take no more. I buried my head in the journal, sobbing uncontrollably.
His cruelty to himself was terrifying. He was afraid his love would hurt me, that his weakness would be a burden.
He shackled himself physically and mentally just to maintain the role of the unfaithful husband he had created. I hated him just as he wanted, but now that hatred was turning against me, causing me a pain a thousand times greater than the truth.
Ethan waited for my sobs to quiet down. Then in silence, he reached under the table where a small safe was hidden by an old rag.
He turned the combination; the sound of the lock clicking echoed dryly. He pulled out a waterproof Ziploc bag, sealed with duct tape.
He held it in his hands for a moment, his gaze thoughtful as if weighing something very important, before slowly placing it in my hands. “This is the last thing he left,” Ethan said, his voice grave and solemn.
“He gave me very clear instructions. I could only give you this bag in one specific scenario: if you discovered the whole truth and came here. If you went your whole life without ever touching that card, if you continued to live in peace and forgot him, then I was to burn this bag and scatter the ashes to the wind.”
I took the bag, feeling its weight in my hands. Though it didn’t seem to contain much, it was the weight of a secret, of a last will buried for seven years.
Trembling, I tore off the duct tape. Inside was a small silver thumb drive and a yellowed white envelope.
On the envelope were three words: “For my wife.” The handwriting, shaky but neat, was identical to that of the last pages of the journal.
“He prepared this in the last week before he died,” Ethan said, looking at the bag in my hands, his eyes red.
“He was very weak, could barely sit up, but he insisted I help him up, comb his hair, and put on his best shirt. He said he wanted to record a few words for you because he was afraid his handwriting would be illegible or that you would forget his voice.”
I caressed the cold thumb drive. A wave of fear washed over me.
I wanted to hear his voice, to see him, but I was also afraid to face his emaciated image. I was afraid I couldn’t bear to see the handsome man I once knew ravaged by disease.
But the desire to see him again, even through a screen, overcame the fear. Ethan, as if reading my thoughts, stood up and went to a corner, pulling out an old laptop.
“I still have this laptop—the one he used to record the video. I haven’t dared to delete anything or watch it a second time. It’s too much.”
He placed the laptop on the table and plugged in the thumb drive. The screen lit up, showing a single folder named “Legacy.”
