Chapter 3
The day we were scheduled to file for divorce was a rare sunny day during the rainy season.
Last night, my heart palpitations were severe, and I hadn’t slept well. I had to put on extra makeup to cover my exhausted face.
Liam was uncharacteristically late.
Just as I checked my phone for the third time to confirm the time, he finally arrived.
I breathed a sigh of relief and spoke to him.
“Let’s go in. Good thing we haven’t missed our number.”
“There are quite a few people getting divorced, so we might have to wait a bit.”
Liam looked at my face, then suddenly leaned in close.
“Blackwood Industries has been doing really well lately, and your… convenient brother will be back in the country soon. You shouldn’t have to work so hard at the company. Why do you look so pale recently?”
“Actually, if you don’t want a divorce, maybe we could just…”
I held up a finger, pushing him away.
“No, let’s do it today. If we drag this out any longer, I truly won’t have the time.”
My eagerness seemed to annoy Liam, and he started to make wild guesses.
“It’s just a divorce. Why won’t you have time?”
“Did you fall in love with someone else?”
His words made me a little angry too.
“No divorce? So you want Chloe to wear a wedding dress and follow you around like a mistress? Whether I love someone else or not, haven’t you had any idea these past three years? And besides, haven’t you always wanted a divorce? Now that I agree, why are you getting mad at me?”
“I love you. I’m letting you go. What else are you not satisfied with?”
I don’t know which sentence pierced Liam.
His emotions flared up even more violently. He grabbed my wrist, accusing me.
“You’re lying!”
“You don’t love me at all!”
I froze, looking at him.
His eyes were red, his voice filled with grievance.
“Riley Blackwood, you love the twenty-eight-year-old Liam. Not *me*!”
“From the day I woke up, my heart recognized you before my memory did. But why, why do you always look at me like that? As if you’re always looking *through* me, at someone else! I’m not him!”
“Riley Blackwood, when will you finally realize! I’m not the *him* from your memories!”
Tears streamed down Liam’s face.
His expression was fragile, something I’d never seen before.
“I didn’t experience five years with you! I didn’t tutor you in advanced math, I didn’t take you to see the sunrise on a snowy mountain, I didn’t order a ring for you.”
“You don’t love me; you’re just using me as his substitute.”
I stared at him blankly, able only to offer a weak explanation.
“But you are the same person.”
He slowly released my hand, his gaze complex.
“Riley Blackwood, I always thought I hated you. Hated you for binding me to you, hated you for forcing your past onto me, hated you for being stuck in memories you couldn’t escape. But only now do I understand.”
“I don’t hate you; I just loved you so painfully.”
“In the end, I just hated that you didn’t love *me* enough.”
Liam said nothing more.
He didn't agree to the divorce. He turned and left.
I sat in the back of the car, staring blankly, remembering the wedding home that had collapsed yesterday. Stubbornly, I wanted to go see it again, but this time the barrier wasn’t raised in advance. The security guard I saw was a completely unfamiliar face.
I asked about Mr. Henderson. The man took a drag from his cigarette and sighed.
“You mean Old Man Dave? He’s gone.”
“He said his wife was afraid of thunderstorms. She went to visit a grave during the rain last night, fell, and passed away on the spot.”
He looked at me, advising.
“Little lady, you should come to this place less often from now on.”
“You can come back, but there’s no one left here.”
The security guard’s words hit me like a heavy punch to the heart. It dawned on me, belatedly: my three years of tangled love, hate, and longing for Liam, and this return to our old haunts, were nothing but a futile attempt to cling to a ghost.
The person I loved had died in that earthquake three years ago.
Liam was rescued, but what truly died was my love.
I didn't get out of the car. I had the driver turn around.
“Let’s go back. I won’t be coming here again.”
*Boom!*
Thunder rumbled in the distance.
It was during the third year of this muggy spring season that I finally accepted Liam’s amnesia.
That very night, I was rushed into the emergency room due to heart failure.
5
Marcus’s sudden trip abroad was also because of my illness.
Cardiac internal medicine started late in our country, and research in this area was still lacking. So Marcus chose to go abroad to help me contact doctors, but there hadn't been any success.