The Love Is Gone, and I Am Lighter

1
On the anniversary of my mother's death, I ran into Uriah Vance. We hadn't spoken in six years.
I acted like he wasn't there, my eyes fixed on my mothers headstone as I walked past him.
He clutched a bouquet of white lilies, following a few steps behind me like a nervous shadow. After a long, heavy silence, he finally found his voice, the words carefully chosen.
"Can I can I go pay my respects to my father?" he asked, his voice strained. "He wanted to see you, before the end. But your address, your number you'd changed everything."
I nodded once.
Surprise flickered in his eyes. Hed expected a fighta storm of furious accusations, the biting, sarcastic remarks I used to be so good at. The rest of his plea, whatever it was, died on his lips.
His eyes, red-rimmed and glistening, lit up with a fragile hope.
"Rina," he whispered, "you don't hate me anymore."
A small, empty smile touched my lips, but I said nothing. Six years, and he still didn't get it.
Hate is just the ghost of love. With no love left, there was nothing to haunt me.

Uriahs father had been kind to me. Whatever happened between his son and me, the man was gone now. Debts die with the dead. It was only right to pay my respects.
After placing the lilies on the grave, I turned to leave.
A weight settled on my shoulder. I looked up into Uriahs gentle gaze as he draped his coat over me. "It's almost winter," he said softly. "You're not dressed warmly enough."
Without a word, I shrugged the coat off. Id learned long ago how to keep myself warm; I didn't need charity from anyone else.
He stiffened, the rejection hanging in the air between us. He quickly changed the subject. "Where are you living now? It's hard to get a cab from out here. Let me give you a ride."
"No need. I work here."
He let out a short, disbelieving laugh. "I actually thought you were over it," he scoffed. "We talk for two minutes and you're already back to your old games. You, of all people. You've always been terrified of places like this."
He was right. I used to be terrified of ghosts. But ever since they buried Mom here, that fear was gone.
Now, some nights, I'd give anything to hear her ghost yell at me just one more time. To hear her scream at the fool I was, throwing my life away for a man, rotting in a cell while she died alone, without me there to hold her hand.
Uriah took a few quick steps to catch up, his hand reaching for mine. Just then, his phone rang. His hand dropped, diving into his coat pocket.
"Lily" he answered, his voice softening.
"Honey, I told you to wait for me! We were supposed to come here together." The voice on the other end was crisp and professional, laced with a playful frustration. "I had to move mountains to get out of that international conference, and I booked the earliest flight back just for you."
If Uriah hadn't used her name, I wouldn't have recognized her.
It was Lily. The same Lily who used to speak in a thick country accent, so self-conscious shed barely say a word. The girl who clung to my arm on her first-ever flight, too afraid to ask for a bottle of water because she thought people would laugh at how she talked.
Now, she sounded like a powerhouse, a woman who commanded boardrooms.
It seemed Uriah had taken very good care of her.
He shot a panicked glance at me, clearly terrified shed find out I was here. He mumbled a few excuses and quickly hung up.
"I'll come find you again," he said before he left, his words a promise or a threat.
My coworker, who had been watching from a distance, came over, her eyes wide with envy. "Rina, you're a quiet one! How do you know a famous lawyer like Uriah Vance?"
"He's the one who bought that quarter-million-dollar plot for his dad," she gossiped. "If you know him, you won't have to worry about sales quotas. Just wait for one of his rich relatives to kick the bucket and"
I couldn't help a tired, hollow laugh. Only people who sell graves for a living wish for death.
The late autumn wind cut through my thin sweater, chilling me to the bone. The smile froze on my face.
There was a time, I remembered, when I had wished for his entire family to die.
I met him when my mother's illness was at its worst. The medical bills piled up, one after another, an insurmountable mountain of debt. I spent my nights by her bedside, holding her hand through the pain, and my days enduring her screaming fits as the agony frayed her nerves and she lashed out at the only person left.
Still, she got worse.
Id hide in the dark, silent stairwells of the hospital, shoving bread into my mouth to choke back the sobs. One night, I finally broke. I screamed at the heavens, cursed my luck, my life, everything, for a solid half hour. Wiping the tears from my face with the back of my hand, I walked out, forgetting Id left my phone behind.
On my way back, I nearly collided with a man walking down the stairs, a cigarette dangling from his lips.
He paused, clearing his throat. "Uh... I didn't hear a thing."
After that, we kept running into each other. It turned out his father was in the same hospital, on the same floor. Hed watch over my mom so I could get a moment of sunshine, then spend three hours waiting for my turn in a crowded, noisy CT scan queue. When my mom, in a fit of rage, would tangle her hands in my hair and scream that the food was inedible, hed quietly appear with a container of takeout from a high-end restaurant.
They were small gestures to him. Insignificant.
But to me, in those moments of suffocating despair, they were a lifeline. A gasp of air when I was drowning.
When he found out my moms condition was from a workplace accident, he took it upon himself to fight for her compensation. The police dragged their feet, so he went to the construction site alone.
By the time I got the call and rushed over, I barely recognized him. He was a silhouette of blood and bruises, surrounded by a dozen workers wielding steel pipes.
"Get the hell out of here, you son of a bitch, or I swear to God I'll run you over!" the foreman screamed.
Uriah was trembling with fear, but he gritted his teeth and stood his ground. "Fifty thousand dollars," he said, his voice shaking but firm. "You're not moving a single pile of dirt until you pay."
"Fuck you!"
The roar of an engine split the air. The workers scattered as a massive excavator lurched forward. A terrible, piercing scream tore from my throat as I ran, throwing myself in front of the machine.
The foreman's lips trembled. "Crazy. You're all fucking crazy."
But it was too late. The machines tracks had crushed Uriahs legs.
Blood seeped into the dirt, blooming around the horrifying white of shattered bone. The veins in his neck bulged as he fought against the agony, but when he saw me, he managed a weak, broken smile.
"Besides my law degree," he gasped, "I guess I need to learn how to throw a punch. Can't exactly get justice for my clients otherwise."
That money got my mom the imported medication she needed. Her condition started to stabilize. Uriah won a few major cases, and his career took off. We made a plan: on my birthday, wed get our marriage license, and then wed go to the hospital and bring my mom home. A surprise for her.
Everything was finally getting better.
The night before our appointment at the courthouse, Uriah was out of town, meeting with a client. Determined not to break his promise, he drove through the night to get back to me.
He was drunk. He hit someone.
I found him huddled in a corner of the hospital waiting room, his eyes locked on the glowing light above the operating room door. A strangled sob escaped his clenched jaw. In that moment, he looked just as hopeless as I had felt when we first met.
"Uriah, it's okay," I whispered, my own heart hammering against my ribs. "I'm here. Just tell them tell them I was driving."
His head snapped up, his eyes wide with disbelief.
My mind was terrifyingly clear. I weighed the options. He was a rising star in the legal world, his future blindingly bright. My own salary didn't even cover the taxes he paid each month. And both our parents would need expensive, long-term care.
It was selfish, in a way. But it was also love.
"We'll beg the family for forgiveness," I reasoned. "Worst-case scenario, I do six months."
He stared at me, his eyes bloodshot, his throat working for a long time before he could speak. "Rina," he choked out, his voice thick with emotion, "if I ever betray you, may God strike me down where I stand."
Neither of us could have known.
The victim died.
The family refused to forgive. And six months turned into seven years.
My coworker, Chloe, slammed her fist on the table, letting out a string of curses. "You did seven years for him? And in the end, he just left you?"
I stood up and poured a glass of water, my voice muffled. "You said it yourself. I did the time for him. Not the other way around."
"So who was she?" Chloe pressed, her voice dripping with venom. "Some rich client? A politician's daughter? Who did that bastard run off with?"
I shook my head.
It was none of those.
It was a girl from a forgotten town upstate who never even finished high school.
After I was incarcerated, Uriah looked more haggard with every visit. Hed say the same thing over and over again. "Just hold on, Rina. I'm doing everything I can to get your sentence reduced."
My heart ached for him. He was running himself ragged, fighting for me while also caring for my mother and his own father. So, I asked my cousin, Lily, the girl I grew up with, to come help.
The three of us sat together, separated by the thick visitation glass. Lily clutched a bag of my favorite homemade cookies, her eyes swollen from crying. "Don't you worry, Rina," she promised. "I'll take good care of Auntie."
Uriah was polite, but I could see the flicker of annoyance in his eyes. Later, he complained, "I can't understand a word she says with that accent, and she doesn't know how to use any of the appliances. Wouldn't it be better to just hire a professional nurse?"
"Just be patient with her," I urged him. "No stranger will ever care for family the way family does."
And just like that, two people whose paths never would have crossed were bound together. By me.
Lily couldn't speak without a thick drawl. So I recorded myself, saying a phrase in our hometown accent, then repeating it in clear, unaccented English. Uriah suggested hiring a tutor, worried I was tiring myself out. He didn't understand. I used to read stories to Lily to help her sleep. My voice was the one shed learn from the fastest.
After my mother recovered enough to care for herself, Uriah wanted to send Lily back home. But I knew what that meant. Her parents had always favored her brothers; they'd marry her off to the first man who could offer a decent bride price. I insisted we enroll her in night school and begged Uriah to find her a stable job, something that would give her a foothold in the city.
Slowly, Uriah's resistance to her softened. He started bringing me good news about her. Shed passed her GED. Shed gotten an internship at his law firm. Shed won her first small case.
At first, I was thrilled for this shy, insecure girl I considered a sister.
But then, a subtle wrongness began to creep in.
During our one-hour visits, Uriah would spend fifty minutes talking about Lily.
Then his visits became less frequent.
Did something happen? No, he's just busy. He has to be busy.
I tried to soothe the anxiety clawing at my throat, but the fluorescent lights of the cell hummed twenty-four hours a day, forbidding sleep, forbidding peace. The mocking whispers of the other inmates echoed in the darkness, giving voice to the fears I didn't dare confront.
"That fool still thinks her hotshot lawyer is waiting for her."
"Seven years ain't seven days. He's found someone else by now. Probably has kids."
Impossible.
I would pull out the pile of gifts and photos hed brought me over the years, my voice cracking as I defended him to their sneering faces. "This is our house! See? We designed it together. Two kids' rooms. The one with the pirate ship is for a boy, and the one with the swing is for a girl. He even picked out a retirement community for us, for when the kids are grown. He promised he'd make up for these seven years."
Any man in the world could cheat.
Not my Uriah.
Never him.
But on the day I was released, he wasn't there to meet me.
Only my grandmother was, her hair white as snow, her back bent as she sat on the edge of a concrete planter. The grief was so heavy in her frail body that when she opened her mouth to speak, only tears came out.
"Oh, Rina," she finally sobbed. "If only you'd gotten out two days sooner. Just two days. You could have seen your mother."
"She kept calling your name," my grandmother wept, "just wouldn't let go. She kept saying you were leaving for college on the train tomorrow, that she needed to pack you an extra bag of roasted pecans for the trip."
My throat closed up. A strange, sharp laugh escaped my lips.
Grandma was getting old. Saying crazy things in the middle of the day.
Mom was at home.
Uriah and Lily were taking perfect care of her.
The last time wed video-chatted, the three of them were laughing, gathered around a steaming pot of soup, talking about wedding plans. They had brochures for venues and photographers spread all over the table.
They were just waiting for me to come home so we could pick a date.
I ran home, my heart pounding. I smoothed my hair in the elevator's reflection, trying to straighten the wrinkles in my cheap, prison-issue clothes.
The door was slightly ajar.
Through the crack, I saw them. Two naked bodies, tangled together on the sofa.
"What's the rush?" the woman purred. "You didn't even lock the door."
The man hastily pulled on his clothes. He turned, and his eyes met mine. He gasped.
In that instant, every drop of blood in my body turned to ice. I burst through the door, a feral scream ripping from my lungs, and launched myself at him. I spun and slapped Lily across the face, the sound echoing in the silent room.
Uriah shoved me back, shielding her with his body. He stared at me, his expression cold. "Seven years in prison taught you nothing?" he snarled. "You get out and the first thing you do is start acting like a lunatic?"
Seven years.
I had survived on a single promise. When you get out, Rina, we'll get married.
To get my sentence reduced, I let the other inmates beat me without fighting back. I worked until my hands were raw, the rope of the heavy loads I carried tearing through calluses, mixing blood with the grime as I forced down moldy food. I walked out of that place and into a world that looked at me with disgust and suspicion.
And this was my reward. He was defending another woman. Accusing me.
Seven years taught you nothing.
But then, just as I thought the pain couldn't get any worse, as despair threatened to swallow me whole, Lily leaned in, a triumphant, cruel smile on her face, and whispered in my ear.

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