Ficorpio
Chapter 1
On the third day after my husband’s unexpected death, I went to the carrier’s store to cancel his phone number.
The employee glanced at the account and asked, “Would you like to cancel the registered family line as well?”
I froze.
We had been married for eleven years, and I had never known he had another line.
The monthly fee was only nineteen dollars—so small I’d never noticed it.
The registered user was Evelyn Hayes, his high-school desk mate and the only woman I had ever been jealous of during our marriage.
Ethan had always told me they lost touch years ago.
I asked the employee to print out the billing records.
The nineteen-dollar fee had been paid every month from before our wedding until the day he died.
There were no large transfers, no suspicious purchases—only a few regular calls each month.
The longest ones had all taken place after midnight.
The last call had been the day before his death. It lasted forty-seven minutes.
The employee checked the balance and asked, “There’s still more than two thousand dollars in prepaid credit. At the current rate, it should cover the monthly fee until around 2036. Do you want to leave the line active?”
I stared at the paper without answering.
Back in the car, I opened the automatic-payment settings on Ethan’s phone.
The note attached to the supplementary line contained only two sentences:
If I’m gone, don’t cancel her number.
She doesn’t have anyone else who calls.
Suddenly, I remembered the last few days Ethan spent in the hospital, when he was barely conscious.
I had bent over him and asked whom he still wanted to see.
He had held my hand.
And every time, he had called my name.
I didn’t cancel the line.
After leaving the carrier’s store, I stood on the steps and dialed it.
The call was answered on the third ring.
“Uncle Ethan?”
It was a little girl.
I gripped my phone, my throat closing as if something had lodged inside it. Two seconds passed before I managed to ask, “Who is this?”
The other end went silent at once. A moment later, someone took the phone from her.
“Hello?”
I recognized Evelyn’s voice immediately.
I hadn’t heard it in eleven years.
I lowered my head and stared at the billing statement, my finger slowly brushing over the string of numbers.
“Are you the one using this line?”
“Yes.”
“How long has it been?”
She didn’t answer.
I let out a soft laugh. “You don’t have to tell me. I’ve already checked.”
A child’s voice suddenly came through the phone.
“Mom, is Uncle Ethan still away on a business trip? I won first place for my drawing. He said he’d take me out for pizza when he got back.”
Evelyn immediately covered the receiver.
When she spoke again, her voice was tight.
“Chloe, Lily doesn’t know yet.”
I closed my eyes. When I opened them, they were already burning.
“Your daughter doesn’t know my husband is dead,” I said quietly. “And I didn’t even know your daughter existed.”
“Lily isn’t his.”
Evelyn fell silent.
I let my hand drop to my side.
“How old is she?”
“Ten.”
I laughed.
Eleven years of marriage.
Chapter 2
Her daughter was ten.
I ended the call and returned to the funeral service center.
Elaine was waiting outside the family lounge. When she saw the billing statement in my hand, the color drained from her face.
“You called Evelyn?”
I stopped in front of her and slowly raised my eyes.
“You knew too?”
She looked away. “It’s all ancient history. Ethan’s gone now. Don’t make a scene here.”
Marcus Reed was carrying a box of Ethan’s belongings out of the room. At her words, he stopped short.
I looked at him.
“And you?”
His lips moved several times before he finally said, “Chloe… Ethan really had nothing going on with her. He was just… helping.”
“Helping with what?”
No one answered.
My gaze moved from Elaine’s face to Marcus’s, and I suddenly remembered the first day after Ethan’s accident. Marcus had put a hand on my shoulder and said, “Chloe, don’t worry. You were the one thing Ethan could never let go of.”
At the time, I had been crying too hard to speak. All I could do was nod.
Now I nodded again, but I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “So I was the one thing he could never let go of, and the two of you decided to hide this from me for eleven years?”
Marcus’s face flushed red.
In a low voice, he said, “Chloe, back then, we honestly thought… there was no need for you to know.”
“No need?”
I folded the statement, slowly and carefully.
“You were all very considerate. Saving me the trouble of knowing.”
Marcus suddenly seemed to remember something. He set the belongings box on the table, then reached into the inner compartment of Ethan’s briefcase and pulled out a clear plastic file.
Two words were written across the front:
Lily Hayes.
“This was in the car too,” he said. “The traffic officers gave it to me with the rest of Ethan’s things. I never opened it.”
Inside was a child’s drawing.
There were three stick figures: Evelyn, Lily, and Ethan.
In the lower-right corner, a caption read:
First-Grade Parent-Child Sports Day.
On the back, in Ethan’s handwriting, were several lines:
Lily, if Uncle Ethan doesn’t come back for a long time, listen to your mother and your teacher.
If something happens and there’s no one else who can help you, go to Aunt Chloe.
She’ll take care of you.
I stared at those last four words.
Little by little, my fingertips went cold.
Elaine reached for the drawing, but I pressed my hand over the corner of the paper first and looked up at her.
“You knew about this too?”
She stiffened.
“Ethan was only worried that Evelyn might have an emergency and Lily would have no one to look after her.”
I suddenly smiled.
“So before he died, he arranged everything for another woman’s daughter.”
I put the drawing back inside the file, my voice barely above a whisper.
“But he never once asked me whether I was willing.”
Chapter 3
In eleven years, this was the first time Ethan had made plans for a future without him.
And the future he had arranged had nothing to do with what I wanted.
The afternoon after Ethan’s cremation, I went home to collect his things.
He had always been the kind of person who prepared for everything in advance.
Whenever we traveled, he booked two refundable hotels. He labeled the medicine cabinet according to expiration dates. If he promised Marcus he’d help him move at seven, he would be standing downstairs by six fifty.
I used to laugh and tease him, “Do you even have a plan for the day I divorce you?”
Ethan would pinch my cheek, grinning shamelessly. “I do. Step one: refuse to sign the papers.”
I would push his hand away and deliberately put on a stern face. “And step two?”
“Talk you into coming back.”
“What if that doesn’t work?”
He would pull me into his arms. “Then I’ll court you all over again.”
Back then, I laughed until I could barely breathe. I felt safe.
Because when Ethan promised something, he almost never failed to deliver.
I even used to tell people, “His greatest strength is that he always keeps his word.”
Only later did I understand that when someone trusts their own plans too much, they can forget that other people’s lives are not theirs to arrange.
I spread the drawing from the parent-child sports day across the desk and called Evelyn Hayes.
“Was Ethan the one who went that day?”
She paused. “Yes.”
“For the second-grade parents’ open house?”
“Yes.”
“When Lily was hospitalized?”
“He came.”
“The parent-teacher meetings?”
“He went twice.”
I tightened my grip around the phone as I walked to the window.
During our third year of marriage, I asked Ethan seriously for the first time whether he wanted children.
That day, a friend’s two-year-old son had clung to Ethan’s arms the entire time.
On the drive home, I tilted my head toward him and smiled as I nudged his arm.
“You always say you can’t stand children. You looked pretty natural holding him back there.”
Ethan adjusted my seat belt for me, then lowered his head with a smile. “Playing with someone else’s kid for ten minutes is one thing. Raising your own for more than a decade is another. I couldn’t handle it.”
The smile slowly faded from my face as I studied his profile.
“So we’re really not having children?”
Ethan started the car. After a few seconds, he reached for my hand.
“Chloe, it’s not that I’m afraid of responsibility.”
He lifted my fingers to his cheek and brushed against them gently.