Chapter 3
A week later, I had finished my work at the office and had nothing else to do, so I fell asleep in my office chair. I slept deeply, as I had indeed been under a lot of stress lately.
By nighttime, because I had rested for so long during the day, I wasn’t sleeping as heavily. I woke up groggily to find my wife not in bed.
I initially thought she was in the bathroom and didn’t think much of it, preparing to go back to sleep.
But suddenly, I heard whispered voices coming from outside the door.
Could it be my wife talking on the phone with someone?
A feeling of unease immediately welled up in my heart. So late at night, my wife wasn’t in the room but secretly making a call in the living room. Had our marriage hit a rough patch?
I hurriedly went to the door, pressing myself against it as if trying to meld into it. I could hear my wife’s voice from outside.
“Rachel, please help me out. Hasn’t your company not paid salaries for months now? If you help me, I’ll add another thousand… no, two thousand. How about that?”
So she was talking to Rachel. The heart that had jumped to my throat relaxed a bit. But suddenly, Rachel’s voice rang out. It wasn’t the sound of a phone call; she was right there in the living room with my wife.
“No, no, Lily. Even if I’m desperate for money, I can’t agree to this. Last time we almost got caught by your husband…”
I was stunned. What had they almost been caught doing?
My wife continued, “Don’t worry, that was just a fluke. I promise it won’t happen again.”
“Look, if you agree, I’ll not only give you an extra two thousand, but I’ll also have my husband arrange a position for you at his company. The salary will definitely be higher than at your previous company.”
Rachel seemed to fall silent.
I listened, completely confused. What extra money? What was Lily asking Rachel to agree to? And how was I involved in all this? What on earth was going on?
After a long while, under Lily’s urging, Rachel seemed to waver, but she said, “Oh, Lily, I really don’t understand why you’re doing this. It’s clear that your husband truly loves you. Why don’t you two just have a baby? Maybe that would change your mind.”
My heart, which had just settled, leapt up again.
Although Lily’s voice wasn’t loud, I could still hear a hint of dismissiveness in her words.
“I don’t want to turn into a frumpy housewife because of a kid. I still want to enjoy life for a few more years. You have no idea, every time I’m intimate with my husband, I secretly take contraceptives afterward.”
“I can’t live without the strong bodies of those young studs out there!”
Hearing this, I nearly collapsed to the ground. So the so-called full-time housewife was actually going out to party behind my back every day. All that talk about not being able to live without it was just an excuse.
And the reason we hadn’t had a child in all these years was also due to her secret manipulations.
Disbelief, pain, and anger instantly flooded my mind. I wanted to rush out and slap her hard, demanding to know why she would do this.
But just then, she spoke again, pleading with Rachel.
“Come on, Rachel. My husband has been under a lot of stress lately. He’s sleeping like the dead every night. You could put a corpse next to him and he wouldn’t even notice!”
A lightning bolt flashed through my mind, and an unbelievable suspicion formed in my thoughts.