促銷資訊載入中...
My Husband Scattered His Mother's Ashes
NovelShort
new
已完結
The day my husband's own mother got her critical-condition notice, I called him fifteen times before he finally picked up, sounding annoyed. I told him through my tears, "Mom's condition isn't stable....
章節（4）
第1章
The day the hospital issued the critical condition notice for my husband's own mother, I called him fifteen times before he finally picked up, and even then it was with irritation in his voice.
I was crying as I told him, "Mom's in bad shape, you need to get to the hospital right now."
He thought I meant my mother, and he snapped at me.
"That little bit of diabetes your mom's got, she's been carrying on with it for years now. Nothing's ever actually wrong, is there?"
"And I'm not a doctor. Calling me is pointless. I've got important things to do, so stop bothering me."
I opened the home security camera and saw him sitting there with his brother's widow and their niece, all of them enjoying the air conditioning and eating fruit.
My husband handed her a travel itinerary.
"Here, I pulled three all-nighters to put together this trip plan for you and Hannah."
My heart skipped half a beat.
His own mother was in critical condition at the hospital, I'd called him more than a dozen times, and he wouldn't come for even one trip.
Yet he could stay up three nights straight, carefully putting together a travel plan for his brother's widow and his niece.
Following Mom's will, I didn't tell him. I handled everything for her passing on my own.
Two days later, wanting money to help out the widow, he came to me with his hand out.
In the middle of the argument, he knocked over his own mother's urn.
1
That afternoon the surgery lights went dark, and the doctor told me, with regret in his voice,
"I'm sorry, Miss Henson. We did everything we could."
I didn't tell my husband. I handled everything for Mom's passing on my own.
Two days later, on the day of the cremation, he called to challenge me.
"Geraldine Henson, what's the matter with you? You didn't even pay the electric bill, and now the power's out. In this heat, are you trying to cook me alive?"
Ever since his older brother died, Nigel Gilbert had been like a different person.
He started paying special attention to the widow.
Feeling especially sorry for her and her daughter.
He could stay up night after night making travel plans for her.
For his niece's spot at a good school, he ran around every day asking people for favors, and burned through half a year's worth of his writing income.
He could even drink until he gave himself a perforated ulcer to get something done for her, without a single complaint.
For her, he sweated every detail and gave everything he had.
But the things at home, he never once asked about.
Even paying the utility bills, which took a few taps on his phone, he couldn't be bothered to lift a finger.
What made it even more hopeless was that my mother and his mother were hospitalized at the same time, and I was one person running back and forth, stretched impossibly thin.
But every time I called him, he said he was busy with his writing and couldn't spare the attention.
Not until the day of his own mother's critical condition notice did I open the camera at home.
Only then did I understand. His so-called "can't spare the attention" turned out to be him staying up night after night making a travel plan so the widow could go on vacation.
I sat in the lobby of the crematorium.
I glanced at the window in the distance.
I no longer had the strength to argue with him.
"If the bill's overdue, then pay it. I'm not the power company. Calling me is pointless."
第2章
After half an hour, I draped the urn with the length of cloth Mom had loved most while she was alive.
By the custom back home, the ashes had to sit in the house for a day before they could be taken to the cemetery the next morning.
I was carrying the urn back to the foot of his mother's old walk-up when it happened.
Nigel's voice rang out:
"Geraldine Henson!"
I turned around.
It looked like Nigel had been waiting there a long time for me.
He got out of the car and stormed up to me, seething.
The moment he reached me, he shouted his complaint:
"What exactly is your problem?"
"You won't pay the utility bills, you won't come home to do the housework. You've completely washed your hands of this household, is that it?"
Hearing that, all I felt was how absurd it was.
I looked at him and asked, word by word:
"I won't pay the utilities, so you can't?"
"I won't do the housework, so you can't? Do you not have hands?"
"Oh, no, that's right. Your hands are reserved for doing housework at your brother's widow's place."
"Your time is reserved for staying up all night planning her travel itineraries."
Caught out, Nigel's face shifted, but he recovered fast and shouted at me, self-righteous as ever:
"Geraldine Henson, do you have a shred of conscience?"
"My brother is dead. His widow is all alone with no one to lean on, and she's raising a daughter on her own."
"Her life is so hard. If even I won't help her, how is she supposed to get by?"
I'd heard this reasoning at least ten times.
Every time before, I'd chosen to forgive it.
But now, with the heavy urn in my arms.
The reasoning only struck me as ridiculous.
I didn't want to argue with him anymore, and shook my head.
"Since you've got it all so well reasoned out, since you think she's all alone with no one to lean on, then go ahead and help her."
I finished and started to leave.
Nigel threw out his hand to block me:
"I told you, the utility bills at the house still haven't been paid!"
I said coldly:
"Pay them yourself. Open Venmo, tap the bill pay section. Do I have to teach you that too?"
"I…" Nigel's brow knotted, and he said, a little guiltily: "I, my account's empty. Transfer me some."
So he was broke, and that was why he'd come looking for me on purpose.
I asked:
"That book of yours sold well in the first half of the year. Didn't you put away fifty thousand?"
Nigel gritted his teeth and said:
"I did have fifty thousand, but didn't she want to take our niece traveling?"
I said:
"What does that have to do with your book advance?"
Nigel lowered his voice:
"She's a woman on her own with our niece to raise. Where would she get money? I paid for their trip."
I couldn't believe it.
Nigel was such a tightfisted man.
Normally, if I bought myself an iced latte, he'd call it a waste, say I didn't know how to run a household.
If I bought a dress over a hundred dollars, he'd say I was throwing money away, that a thirty-dollar one would do just fine.
If I went to a movie, he could nag about it for half a day.
And now he'd handed over fifty thousand all at once.
Not for anything big. Just to send his brother's widow on a trip!
第3章
My hand jerked, and I almost lost my grip on the urn.
"Nigel, you bastard!"
I didn't want anything more to do with him. I turned to step past him and go.
But he blocked me again.
"I really don't have a cent to my name right now. Transfer me some money, fast. And don't forget the mortgage is due at the end of the month."
"So you do remember there's a mortgage." I stared at him, eyes red.
"I…" Something in his face said he knew he'd gone too far.
He lowered his head. "But your sister-in-law has it really hard, and Hannah's worn out from school every day. I just thought they deserved a chance to relax."
"They got to relax. And what about me?"
My voice shook.
"Last year I worked overtime for weeks, pulling all-nighters, and I finally got the project bonus. I wanted to celebrate. I wanted to travel, to see the ocean. And what did you say?"
Nigel looked down.
I said it through tears.
"You said, what's so great about the ocean, can't I watch it on TV?"
"You said, better to put that money in the bank and earn interest."
"But the second your brother's widow said it was a hassle picking the kid up from school every day and she wanted to buy a car—"
"You didn't even ask me. You just transferred that money to her. You didn't even make her write an IOU."
"That was my bonus. Countless nights, countless sweat, and that's what I got for it."
"Money I earned myself, and I'm not entitled to enjoy it, not entitled to a single trip."
"But your brother's widow only has to open her mouth. She's the one who's struggling, she's the one who's tired, and she gets to take the money I earned with my own sweat and go enjoy herself, go traveling, for no reason at all?"
Nigel heard all of it and didn't feel the slightest shame. Instead he looked at me with disgust.
"Geraldine, listen to yourself."
"No matter how hard it is for you, no matter how tired you are, you still have me, don't you?"
"But she has nothing."
"So how can you even compare yourself to her?"
His words nearly made me sick with rage.
Every urge to argue with him drained away.
I looked at him, cold. "Move. I don't want to talk to you anymore."
Nigel said, "Fine, I'll move. Give me the money."
My voice trembled. "Give you money? So you can take my money and buy her a car?"
"So you can take my money and send her on another trip?"
Nigel snapped, "Geraldine! You've gone too far!"
I gave a cold little laugh. "Not one cent of my money is ever going to you again. Move."
Rage flashed across his face.
"You don't give me the money, I'm not moving!"
第4章
In that moment, I was truly at the end of everything.
Whatever hope I'd had left for Nigel was gone. There was nothing left to feel.
I stopped talking.
I forced my way past him and started walking.
Seeing me about to leave, Nigel panicked and grabbed at the box in my hands.
It was wrapped in cloth, so he had no idea what was inside.
I shouted at him.
"Let go!"
Nigel sneered.
"You're guarding it this hard. What's so precious?"
"It's none of your business!" I yelled. "Don't you dare touch it!"
A knowing sneer curled at the corner of his mouth.
"What kind of shameful thing is it, that I can't even lay a finger on it?"
"The harder you try to stop me, the more I want to see what it is."
And he lunged to snatch it.
Desperate, I cried out at him.
"Nigel, if you don't let go right now, we're getting a divorce!"
"What did you say?"
He stared at me, disbelieving.
As if he couldn't believe I'd actually said the word divorce.
I said it firmly.
"Let go!"
Nigel looked at me, silent for a moment, and then his face twisted with anger.
"What shameful thing is in there, exactly? If you won't tell me, I'm not letting go!"
Inside was his mother's ashes.
And it was her own dying instruction that he wasn't fit to see her off, that there was no need for him to attend the funeral.
I glared at him.
"I'm not saying it again. Let go right now, or else—"
"Or else divorce, right? Still trying to scare me with that?"
Nigel sneered. "Don't think I can't see it. You're this worked up, so it has to be something you don't want me to find!"
"The more you keep it from me, the more I'm going to look!"
His grip surged with sudden force.
I fought to shield it.
And in the struggle, the box fell to the ground.
A shattering crash.
As the box broke into pieces,
my heart broke with it.
Nigel stared at the ashes scattered across the ground, shock all over his face.
"Ger—Geraldine, are you insane? What are you doing carrying an urn around?"
I shouted through my tears.
"That's your mother!"
Nigel froze for a second, then laughed.
"Impossible. Geraldine, you really will stop at nothing to sicken me. You can actually bring yourself to say something like that?"
The wind picked up, and the ashes scattered over the ground, drifting away on the air.
He stepped closer and snarled.
"Geraldine, can you stop the act already?"
"You're just jealous of the widow, aren't you?"
"To keep me from taking care of her, you'd make up a reason this vicious. Are you even human?"
He kicked hard at the broken fragments of the box.
The box flipped over.
And there was the photo of his own mother on it.
The instant he saw that photo, the color drained from his face.