Kintsugi

For our third wedding anniversary, Eugene Farley booked out the entire Southport Porcelain Museum to host a solo restoration exhibition for me. At the center of the hall stood the piece I'd spent two years restoring, a Song-era tea bowl called Sky-Blue After Rain. He had once held my hand and said, "No one understands better than our Candice how to make something broken whole again." But just outside the hidden door of the lounge, I saw him press Isabel Pruitt against a display case, kissing her hard. And inside that case, the very bowl, Sky-Blue After Rain, quietly mirrored their tangled shapes. What made it crueler was this: three days earlier, outside his study, I'd learned that on the day two years ago when I was four months pregnant and "pushed down the stairs" into a miscarriage, Eugene hadn't been abroad at a meeting at all. He'd been at the estate that belonged to me, planting flowers with Isabel Pruitt. Later, right in front of him, I used the pine resin and lacquer from my kintsugi work to set that whole estate on fire. He thought I died in that blaze. But he never knew that kintsugi can mend the cracks in porcelain and never the fracture in a heart. Broken things, no matter how well you mend them, are still broken. A man whose heart has turned, I don't want anymore. Chapter One Tonight the Southport Porcelain Museum blazed with light. Eugene had booked out the whole place to host a solo restoration exhibition for me. In the glass case at the center of the hall sat the piece I'd spent two years restoring, the Song-era tea bowl: Sky-Blue After Rain. I'd traced the crackle across its body with kintsugi, fine gold lines winding along every fracture like scars that had healed. "No one understands better than our Candice how to make something broken whole again." Before we left this morning, Eugene had hugged me from behind and slid a new wedding ring onto my finger. A sky-blue glazed porcelain ring, fired by his own hands, meant to match my Sky-Blue After Rain, he said. "Happy third anniversary, Candice," he said. "I'm going to keep you as the porcelain in my palm for the rest of your life." Such sweet words. Such a moving vow. If only I hadn't stood outside the hidden door of the lounge ten minutes earlier, and through that narrow gap seen Eugene pressing Isabel Pruitt against a display case, kissing her hard. Isabel's pearl earring dragged across the glass, a faint, teeth-setting scrape. And inside the case, that Sky-Blue After Rain quietly mirrored their tangled shapes. I have mild night blindness; in the dark I actually see more clearly. I saw Eugene's hand slide up under Isabel's skirt, saw her tip her head back, baring that pale pink scar. That scar. Eugene had stroked it in front of her countless times, aching with tenderness. "The knife Isabel took for me back then nearly cost her her life." "She was disfigured because of me. I can't just abandon her." "Candice, be good. She only lives outside the house. She's no threat to your place here." I had always believed Isabel was just the girl who once saved Eugene's life as a boy, a burden he had no choice but to keep. Until three days ago, when I heard the truth outside his study. "Mr. Farley, Miss Pruitt went to the estate again last week. Mrs. Farley ran into her." "What was she doing there?" "She said... she said she wanted to see the white camellias you planted for her with your own hands. After all, two years ago, on the day Mrs. Farley lost the baby, you were at the estate keeping her company." I stood outside the door, still holding the pear broth I'd stewed for Eugene. Two years ago, four months pregnant, when Isabel "accidentally" pushed me down the stairs, I called him. Eugene said he was abroad at a meeting. Afterward the baby was gone, my uterine wall too badly damaged, and I would never be able to conceive again, never have a child of my own. So that day he was at the estate, planting flowers with Isabel. The sounds in the lounge slowly settled. Eugene lit a cigarette and made a call. "Clear out the greenhouse in the west wing of the estate. Isabel feels the cold. She needs to be comfortable there this winter." On the other end was his personal assistant, who hesitated. "Mr. Farley, that greenhouse is where Mrs. Farley keeps her cat." "That cat?" Eugene exhaled a stream of smoke, his voice flat. "Just get rid of it." I bit down hard on the back of my hand and didn't make a sound, wiping away tears that shouldn't have fallen. That cat was named Pip. I'd picked her up on a rainy night, a white cat, blind in one eye, half her right ear missing, like a piece of porcelain that had shattered and been barely put back together. I'd raised her for four years. Eugene knew I raised her like a child, from a creature that feared people at first to the one who was closest to me now, family in every way. Inside, Isabel softened her voice. "Eugene, today is your anniversary with Candice Sullivan. Aren't you afraid she'll find out, you being here with me?" Eugene laughed low and slid an arm around her waist. "She won't. She's easier to soothe than anyone." "And what if... she finds out I'm living in the estate you built for her?" "Even then it doesn't matter." Eugene's voice came through the gap in the door like a poisoned needle. "Candice can't live without me. She's so soft, so obedient. Even if she knew, she'd just hide somewhere and cry to herself." I looked down at my own hands. These hands had restored countless priceless antique porcelains. And now, in the dark, they were shaking beyond recognition. So porcelain breaks easily, and promises break even faster. I turned and left, and in the museum restroom I did three things. The first: I called my lawyer and had a set of divorce papers drawn up. The second: I booked all the procedures to erase my identity, three days from now. The third: I bought a ticket to Rainfall Village, in the southern highlands. I knew Eugene's reach was long, that a normal divorce would never make it through. So I had to vanish while he still didn't know, like a wisp of smoke, evaporating from this world completely.