Chapter 14%
The string was the gift he gave to Wanda. She had once promised him that she would never take it off for the rest of her life.
Eric refused to believe it. He could not accept that the woman who had been in his arms that very morning was now this cold, lifeless corpse.
As he knelt on the floor. He looked blankly into nothingness as if his entire body had been drained of its soul.
Suddenly, his trembling hands reached out as he tried to wipe the blood from the corpse’s face. Yet, there was too much blood. No matter how hard he tried, he could not wipe it all away!!
Abruptly, he stood up, while muttering under his breath, “This isn’t my Wanda. My Wanda is waiting for me at home.”
He chased away all the reporters who tried to interview him, then he rushed to the underground parking area and drove his car toward his home.”
When he arrived, his son, Ben, was playing with building blocks in the living room.
Seeing his father covered in blood, Ben ran toward him without his slippers on. “Dad!” he asked, “What happened to you?”
Eric did not answer, He down the wave of despair threatening to overwhelm him and asked, word by word, “Where’s Mommy? Where did she go?”
Ben looked at his father’s bloodshot eyes and stammered, “Mom- Mommy went out.”
When he heard this, Eric exhaled in relief. “I scared myself for nothing. I told you, it couldn’t have been her. It must be some kind of cruel prank.“2
Yet, his fragile sense of relief was shattered when he noticed three items near the entryway.
The first was a divorce agreement. Wanda had put her sign neatly on the bottom
The second one was the phone she had left behind. At that moment, he realized why she had not returned his call or answered his messages.
He picked up the phone and tried to unlock it, only to find that the family photo of the three of them that had been the wallpaper had been replaced by the default system screen.
When he opened it, the phone was empty. There were no contact lists, nor messages, except for a single pinned WhatsApp conversation.8 The name at the top was Christina and the most recent message was sent three hours ago. “As you wished. I’ve lost the bet. I’ll leave him. E
When he scrolled to the top, there were countless provocative messages from Christina. They were filled with photos and messages flaunting her intimacy with him.8
Eric’s throat went dry, his legs weakened and his face turned as pale as a ghost.
All he could think of was that Wanda knew he had been cheating on her.
Frantically, he scrolled to the beginning of the conversation
In the first message, “Do you know where your husband and son are? Maybe you’ll see us on TV during the reunion.“8
His breathing suddenly became labored and heavy, as if he was being pressed out by a huge mountain inside, so stuffy that he almost suffocated E
It was clear that Wanda had already known everything, but she never confronted him or begged him to stay. Instead, she silently erased herself from his life, plece by piece
Suddenly, Eric’s mind drifted back to the last wedding anniversary he missed.
The slight redness in the comers of Wanda’s eyes at that time was not because she had waited for a long time, but because she was secretly crying alone while he brought his son to celebrate Christina’s accomplishment.
Then things she threw away and called garbage at that time were actually things that she had of him and their son. She was discarding all of them
As he thought about these, fear gripped Eric’s heart. For the first time in his life, he was too scared to open the last gift.
Yet, logic told him this was his only chance to glimpse Wanda’s inner thoughts. So, he held back his tears and opened the thick diary
It was a record of Wanda’s life from the time she lost her parents to the present. The early entries were filled with her grief over becoming an orphan. Soon, his name was added to it
Later, Ben’s name was added.
4:30 PM
