Chapter 1

Sean was leaving for a remote research station out in the wilderness. Before he left, he held my hands and said:

"Wendy, conditions out there are brutal, and the brass doesn't allow families to tag along. Home needs you, too. Bear with it for three years. I'll be back before you know it."

Yet three years turned into another three. I waited for Sean for seven whole years.

He never came home.

A phone call every five days, a FaceTime call once a month, and our only face-to-face time relied on his meager seven days of annual leave.

Yet I never uttered a single complaint, terrified of holding his career back.

It wasn't until I got pregnant that my emergency spousal visit request was finally approved.

After a bumpy trip across thousands of miles, I knocked eagerly on his staff apartment door. A little girl opened it:

"Daddy, someone's here! I don't know her!"

I thought I had the wrong door.

The next second, Sean's doting voice drifted from inside:

"Sweetheart, Daddy's busy right now. I'll have Mommy go check."

His assistant, Tiffany, came to the door.

The moment she saw me, she froze, utterly speechless:

"Wendy, what are you doing here..."

Clutching my belly, my heart, which had hung in limbo for seven years, finally went cold.

It turned out Sean wasn't unable to care for a family. He just wasn't caring for mine.

Seeing that nobody was moving at the door, Sean finally put down his documents and walked out of the study.

When he saw it was me, he had the exact same reaction as Tiffany, stammering in shock:

"Wendy, why did you come so suddenly..."

I sighed softly, cutting him off.

"I'm exhausted. I'd like to come in and sit down first."

"Do you want me to change into slippers?"

Tiffany finally snapped out of it, hurriedly pulling a pair of women's slippers from the shoe cabinet and handing them to me.

They were half a size too big—her size.

I said nothing, slipped them on, and sat on the living room sofa.

Holding the little girl's hand, Tiffany forced a smile at me.

"Wendy, you and Sean talk."

"Lily, come here. Mommy will take you back to your room. Let's not interrupt Daddy while he's talking."

I raised my eyes and gave her a flat look.

She paused, seemingly realizing her slip of the tongue.

She gave me a timid glance, as if terrified I would make a scene right then and there, and hurried to explain:

"Wendy, don't misunderstand. This child is..."

Sean scrambled to his feet.

He stepped protectively in front of Tiffany and the child, watching me with guarded eyes:

"Wendy, she's Tiffany's kid from her previous marriage. We were worried Lily would get bullied at school without a father, so we let her call me Daddy. Tiffany and I are really just colleagues."

I said nothing.

I reached out, patted the little girl's head, and looked up at Tiffany.

"No need to make tea. Once you settle the kid in, come over and join us."

"Whatever Sean and I have to talk about involves you anyway."

Tiffany clearly hadn't expected me to react so calmly.

After speaking, I sat back down on the sofa.

Sean sat across from me, at a total loss for words, looking at me with bewilderment.

He was probably shocked by how calm and composed I was.

It was nothing, really.

Seven years was more than enough to drain the life out of someone.

My grievances, my anger, my resentment had been ground to dust long ago.

The flirtatious female voice often heard in the background of his calls, the woman's nightgown strap flashing in the corner of our FaceTime calls, even his annual leave cut short due to "emergencies."

I wasn't an idiot. Pretending not to notice until now was only because I wanted proper closure for these seven years of marriage.

Tiffany returned and naturally sat down right beside Sean.

I watched it all, knowing that I was the actual outsider in this house.

Sean spoke first.

"I'm sorry, Wendy. I overreacted just now. Don't take it to heart."

"I was just so surprised. Why didn't you tell me you were coming? I could've gone to the station to pick you up."

With that, he reached out to hold my hand.

I pulled away.

I looked down with a self-deprecating smile, pulling out a folder from my bag.

On top was a thick stack of rejected visitor applications from the past seven years.

Every single one stamped with a bright red REJECTED.

The reason: [Rejected by Sean Miller himself].

"If I hadn't gone directly to your director, I never would've known that you were the one who personally rejected every single one of my requests all these years."

"If I had told you in advance, would you have ever let me come?"

Sean glanced at the papers, looking away with guilt written all over his face.

"Wendy, the project was in a critical phase back then. I really couldn't step away. I couldn't afford any distractions. That's why..."

"You've been busy for seven years. You had time to take your colleague's kid to sports days and summer camps, but no time to let your own wife visit for a reunion?"

Sean froze.

I pointed toward the framed photos sitting under the TV cabinet.

"I see the date on that photo says March 7th of this year. I remember calling you that day. I told you I had just been in a car crash and barely made it out of the ICU. You told me you were too busy with the project to come back, and told me to be strong on my own."

"So that 'critical project' was just attending a parent-child sports day for your colleague's daughter?"

Sean lowered his hands, his fists clenching involuntarily.

Tiffany jumped in to defend him:

"Wendy, please don't get the wrong idea."

"Things were genuinely critical back then. Sean only squeezed out a tiny bit of free time to accompany Lily."

"Right," I replied calmly.

Looking at the two of them huddled together like I was some monster coming to wreck their happy family, I found it almost comical.

I asked myself in my heart: Wendy, is this the home you spent seven years waiting for?

I couldn't answer.

I simply moved the visitor requests aside.

From beneath, I pulled out two documents and laid them side by side on the coffee table.

One was a pregnancy test report.

The other was a divorce agreement.

"Don't worry. I'm not here to start a fight. Pointing fingers is pointless now. Sean, I'm pregnant. As the child's father, you have a right to know. That was my reason for coming here."

"But I'm not keeping this baby. I'm here to divorce you."