Marco might be sick, I want to know if he’s okay…
She just sighed, her eyes red. The flight was booked for September 15, at 9 a.m. But at 7 a.m., as I was locking my suitcase, there was a knock on the door.
A delivery man stood at the gate, handing me a small gift box:
“From your husband sent from Japan.”
I shivered, my heart pounding. Thinking he was thinking of his mother and daughter, I quickly opened the box…
No note, no gift, only a… wedding ring and a photo — he was wearing a suit, standing next to a Japanese woman in a white wedding dress, in the middle of a garden of shining cherry blossoms. I was stunned.
My hands were shaking, tears were flowing, blurring the photo. That wedding ring was the one I had put on his hand on our wedding day — the inside was engraved with the words “M.L ♥ M.A. 2018.”
Now, it sat alone in the cold box, like a sentence for a foolish person who had been overconfident.
I sat on the floor, my hands clasped over my chest, sobbing:
“Marco… why did you do this to us?”
The little son heard my voice, ran outside, hugged my neck and asked:
“Mom, did Papa send the gift? Will he come home?”
I bit my lip until it bled, tried to hold back my tears, and said softly:
“Yes, my child. Papa sent… but he can’t come home yet.”
That morning, I couldn’t walk to the airport.
The suitcase was still in the same place. The plane ticket was in my jacket pocket. I no longer had the courage to look for the man I had once trusted with all my heart — because his heart belonged to someone else.
A few days later, his friend who worked with him passed by. He looked at me and sighed:
“Marco lives in Osaka. He married a Japanese woman… He told me not to wait any longer.”
Those words were like a knife piercing my heart.
The entire sky collapsed. I fell silent. Sell the wedding ring to pay off the debt.
Then take the child back to his mother’s hometown in Ilocos Norte. Every night, when the child asks:
“Mom, does Papa still love me?”
I just stroke his hair, forcing a smile:
“Papa loves you, son. He’s just far away.”
Outside, the sea breeze blows on the roof.
I sat there holding the child, looking up at the dark sky, and said to myself:
“If he chooses to leave, I choose to live. Live so that my child can grow up knowing that, even if his father leaves, his mother is still strong enough to protect him for the rest of his life.”
And in the middle of that long, silent night, I understood — sometimes, betrayal doesn’t kill us, it just forces us to learn to love ourselves and live for the two of us.
