Forgetting My Husband Set Me Free

She gave a soft, smothered laugh.

"Delilah, I've been generous enough to let you see all my secrets."

"Years ago I handed Simon over to you, didn't I? Shouldn't you be a little generous too?"

"Lend me your husband to play with for a while."

That year, after Karen found out the man I'd quietly loved for eight years was Simon.

She broke things off with Simon all on her own and left the country.

That year, Simon chased her flight path across the world for three months.

Everyone said Karen had deliberately handed her boyfriend over to her best friend.

And later, Simon and I really did get married.

I opened my mouth, and found all of it lodged in my throat.

Karen laughed again and patted my stiff shoulder.

"I'm just teasing you, Delilah."

"My best friend's man? I'd never touch him."

After I got home that day, I tore out a few more pages of my notebook.

Two days before the wedding redo.

I swallowed a few melatonin pills, and still woke in the middle of the night.

The hall outside was lit up bright, light seeping through the gap under the door.

The door didn't muffle much. I could hear every word.

"Let's change the venue to the place where you and I first met. We've already been to Bali, it's boring."

"I've picked out the hair and makeup too. Royal court style!"

"And the photography team. I went with the very best, can't have them making me look ugly."

Karen went on and on, and Simon never once said she was wrong.

Just like that, in a few quick lines, they overruled the wedding I'd spent five years planning.

I'd never been to Bali. It was a regret of mine.

I loved the traditional style, the homeland's meaning of growing old together.

All of it changed, except for the wedding vows.

Karen looked them over and didn't strike them down.

But Simon, who'd let everything else slide a moment ago, ran his eyes across them.

He pointed:

"Never to part."

"This line is too heavy."

My heart clenched all at once.

I'd written the vows myself, six hundred words pouring out of me. And they were also the very oaths Simon had spoken when he begged to marry me.

Back then he'd said them so easily. Now he called them too heavy.

Karen laughed.

"Then just pretend you're saying them to me."

"Actually, Simon, you still have feelings for me, don't you?"

"Stop it."

Simon's tone hardened a little.

But Karen wasn't the least bit upset.

She counted them off on her fingers, one by one.

"Back when I slit my wrists, you dropped Delilah at the altar without a second thought and left her standing there alone, so humiliated."

"And that other time, when I said for the second time I was leaving the country and never coming back, you locked Karen in the car on purpose, begging me not to go."

"You even switched your phone off. You said that day, all of Simon belonged to me, completely."

So it wasn't that he forgot. He locked me in the car on purpose.

Killed my child on purpose.

"So you see, Simon, you say one thing and mean another."

"Enough!"

Simon cut Karen off, but his voice was all weariness.

"There's no going back for us."

Karen pressed on:

"You only married Delilah back then to spite me, didn't you?"

Simon was never good at lying.

In the long silence that followed, my heart sank, bit by bit.

He didn't deny it.

I got up and tore out the first page of my notebook.

The evening before the wedding redo, I went in for my fourth follow-up.

I looked at Dr. Perry, who kept sighing one breath after another, and said calmly.

"Take me off the medication. It's not working."

As he saw me out, Dr. Perry still couldn't stop himself from barging into Simon's office.

"Do you have any idea how serious your wife's psychological condition has gotten? She's about to forget—"

Simon cut him off.

He kept writing in the medical file, not even lifting his head.

"I'm a psychologist too. She's at my side every single day. You think I wouldn't know whether something's wrong with her?"

"Besides, it's been five years. Through all of it, Delilah has always been strong."

That line became the last blade, twisting hard into my heart.

So he had known all along. He knew everything I'd swallowed for all these years.

And he chose to pretend he couldn't see it.

His forgetting wasn't a bad memory. It was selective. He simply chose to forget the people and things that didn't matter to him.

Dr. Perry started to say something more, but I pulled him back.

He saw me shake my head, opened his mouth, then said nothing at all.

The day of the redo wedding.

I woke in that vast room, and there wasn't a single person in it.

On the nightstand was my notebook, and tucked inside was a plane ticket bound overseas.

There was only one line written in the notebook, in my own hand.

"Run!"

I didn't hesitate for a second. I grabbed the ticket and headed for the airport.

While I was checking in, a call came through.

The screen showed "Simon Walker."

I answered, and a frantic voice burst out from the other end.

"I forgot to come pick you up. Delilah, just grab a cab and get to the wedding yourself."

There was another woman's voice mixed in with his.

"Simon's just used to only ever bringing me along. Don't hold it against him."

The man's voice kept pushing:

"Everyone's watching. You're the only one missing."

I knit my brows together:

"Who are you?"