My Death Is Your Eternal Sentence

Eight years. That was how long Thomas and I had survived the agonizing, transatlantic bleed of a long-distance relationship.

Just when I thought I was finally going to get the callthe one where he told me his Ph.D. was finished and he was coming home to Chicagothe phone rang, and it was his sixth request for an extension.

"Baby, I'm so sorry. My advisor says the dissertation needs another year of revisions," his voice crackled through the speaker, heavy with that familiar, practiced guilt. "Just give me one more year. Next year, I promise, I'm coming home to marry you."

After the call ended abruptly, a slow, hot anger boiled up in my chest. I opened my laptop and logged into his universitys digital library in London.

I wanted to see exactly what kind of thesis required six extra years of his life.

But the moment the page loaded, the name featured in the "Outstanding Alumni Dissertations" column hit me like a physical blow.

There it was. Published six years ago. The author: Thomas.

An absurd, dizzying question flooded my mind: If his thesis hadn't passed, how the hell was it archived as outstanding?

My hands were shaking so badly I could barely scroll. When I reached the Acknowledgments section, the words pierced my eyes like broken glass.

My deepest gratitude to my greatest love, Melody, for sharing a cramped flat with me, reading beside me, and getting me through the darkest days of my research.

You crossed an ocean for me, and I vow to build our forever home on these shores.

Melody?

The name drove an ice pick straight into my chest. My name wasn't Melody.

Thomas is having an affair.

Those words looped in my brain like a skipping record.

Trembling violently, I grabbed my phone and hit FaceTime.

One call. Two. Ten. All unanswered.

I couldn't even pinpoint when a simple video call with him had become such a luxury.

Gritting my teeth, I booked the next available flight to Heathrow. Eight years of loving Thomas across an ocean, and this would be my first time visiting him.

It wasn't a lack of money. It was a lack of time.

I hadn't wanted him taking grueling, minimum-wage shifts to pay his tuition, so I willingly became the corporate workaholic, burning the midnight oil in Chicago to fund his life in London. My only request was that he spend his holidays back home with me.

But when was the last time we actually saw each other?

Six months ago? A year?

Sitting in the stark, fluorescent glare of the departure lounge, I hunted down Melodys Instagram.

She was twenty-five. Radiant, effortlessly pretty, the kind of girl who curated her life in golden-hour aesthetics.

A post from Thanksgiving: Caught a chill last night. Tommy instantly skipped his seminar to hold my hand at the clinic. He treats me like glass. If his undergrads saw him playing nurse, theyd die laughing.

I remembered that week. I had been stuck at the office, curled under my desk, crying from the sharp, stabbing pain of appendicitis. Crushed by the stress of my job, I had called Thomas, begging him to fly back just for a few days to be with me.

His response back then?

Sabrina, Im not a doctor. My advisor would kill me if I left campus right now.

A post from Christmas: Tommy was supposed to fly back to the States today and was already at the airport. But my period came early and the cramps were awful, so he turned right around and came back to the flat! What an idiot, wasting a plane ticket like that. Doesn't know the value of a dollar.

I remembered that Christmas. I had been ecstatic. Id booked spa days, taken PTO, and even gone on birth control just to manipulate my cycle so we could be intimate without interruption.

I was in an Uber on the way to O'Hare to pick him up when he called to say his flight was canceled.

Reading those captions, I felt two massive, invisible hands wrap around my throat, squeezing until the room spun.

I bombarded Thomas with texts, desperate to force him out of hiding.

Im on the next flight out. Im coming to you.

Are you hiding something from me? Answer me!

Youre going to look me in the eye and explain this.

Fat, heavy tears dropped onto my phone screen, blurring the text into gray smears.

By the time I landed and reconnected to the grid eight hours later, I had no tears left.

I scrambled to open my messages. The blistering rage inside me instantly evaporated into a cold, sickening dread the moment I read his replies.

Don't come looking for me. Theres nothing to explain. Please don't disrupt my life.

Shes pure, Sabrina. Shes innocent. I won't let you drag your drama to her doorstep.

And I didnt tell you because I didn't want to hurt you.

No apologies. No elaborate lies. Just three short texts dismantling my entire existence.

Stepping out of the terminal, the biting London wind slapped my face. I stumbled, barely keeping my balance.

Suddenly, a blur of dark clothing rushed past me.

A man in a black face mask violently yanked my left earlobe. Pain flared white-hot as he tore my gold hoop from my ear, sprinting away and flipping me the bird over his shoulder.

I screamed, instinctively dropping my bags and bolting after him.

That earring was the only thing I had left of my mother!

But the street was a sea of strangers. I pointed, shrieking for help, but pedestrians merely glanced at me and hurried on, deaf to my panic.

I chased him in my heels, bursting onto a busy commercial street.

And there, amidst the chaos of the city, I saw him. Thomas.

He was half-crouching, a DSLR camera pressed to his face, focused entirely on the woman posing in front of a fountain. Melody.

She was vibrant, laughing, perfectly intact.

Honk!

A blaring car horn violently ripped me back to reality.

Tires screeched. The hood of a sedan stopped inches from my knees. The driver rolled down his window, spitting curses at me in an accent I barely registered.

My brain short-circuited. The world tilted, went black, and I collapsed against the pavement.

"I'm sorry, my friend is just causing a fuss. Don't worry about the earring, officer. It's not worth anything."

"Yes, I'm a friend of hers."

Thomas's voice filtered through the haze of my unconsciousness. As he ushered the police officer out of the hospital room, I finally forced my eyes open, struggling up to grab his wrist.

"What do you mean it's not worth anything? It's solid gold! It was my mothers favorite piece of jewelry!"

Thomas stood perfectly still, looking down at me with an unreadable expression.

He was wearing gold-rimmed glasses now. His hair was styled back, sleek and mature.

The only thing that hadn't changed were those deeply expressive eyes.

"Petty theft is rampant here, Sabrina. Filing a report is useless." His thin lips barely moved. "Look, I'll just buy you a replacement."

My grip on his wrist loosened. I slumped back against the hospital bed, the delayed, agonizing ache of the accident finally seeping into my bones.

Silent tears slipped down my cheeks.

All the vicious, screaming questions I had rehearsed on the plane were lodged in my throat. I couldn't utter a single one.

"I actually wanted to tell you six years ago. But I was terrified you wouldn't be able to handle it. I was afraid you'd hurt yourself. Thats why I..."

Thomas took off his glasses, crouching beside my bed, and gently wiped a tear from my jaw.

"Melody has been by my side in a foreign country for eight years. She spent the best years of her youth on me. We practically built a life here."

"Between that and how little we saw each other... it was impossible for me not to fall for her."

"Stop crying, Sab. Just be a good girl and go back to Chicago. Okay?"

I stared at his face, and for a fleeting second, I saw the awkward, fiercely protective boy from ten years ago.

After my parents' messy divorce, I lived with my mother. She was a breathtakingly beautiful woman who couldn't care less about me, often vanishing for months at a time.

During a train ride back to college, I got my first periodyears later than most girlsand accidentally stained the seat.

The drunk, middle-aged man sitting across from me snapped. He grabbed a handful of my hair, demanding I apologize, calling me a filthy, classless slut who was trying to seduce him.

I shrank into myself, crying and whispering apologies while the entire train car just watched in silence.

He demanded money for his "distress." I had no choice but to call my mother. She told me to call my father. My father didn't even pick up.

In the end, it was Thomaswho had just boarded at the last stopwho stepped in front of me.

He punched the man in the jaw, his own face red with fury. "So your mom isn't coming, huh!" he had yelled at me. "Girl, you have to learn how to protect yourself."

Over the years, I never really learned how to protect myself.

But he protected me. Again and again.

As the memory faded, a bitter taste flooded my mouth. I think I finally understood what he meant by, "It was impossible for me not to fall for her."

I tilted my head back, my voice ragged and broken.

"You love her because she had the time to keep you company? You could have told me. I would have quit my job. I would have moved here"

"Sabrina!"

Thomas pinched the bridge of his nose. I caught the briefest flicker of exhaustionand disgustin his eyes.

"She's not like you."

"I'm taking you to the airport. Whatever else you need to say, we can talk about it when I visit the States next month."

As he tried to pull me out of the room, his phone rang.

The moment he saw the caller ID, his entire demeanor softened into something sweet and tender.

"Mel, hey. Yeah, it's all sorted. It was just a friend from back home. She got mugged and decided she wants to fly right back. Don't worry about it."

"Do you even know you're the other woman!?"

Some dark, demonic impulse seized me. I lunged and snatched the phone from his hand.

A decade of swallowed sacrifices erupted into pure, hysterical jealousy. I screamed into the receiver:

"Did you know he's been with me for ten years? What gave you the right to"

Smash.

My vision exploded into stars.

Thomas had shoved me, hard. I flew backward, crashing violently against the metal bedframe.

He didn't even check to see if I was bleeding. He just scrambled to pick up the phone, his voice pitching up in pure panic.

"Melody, baby, listen to me. She's mentally unstable. It's an old condition of hers, I swear to God. Are you seriously going to believe a lunatic over me?"

"Where are you? I'm coming to you right now."

A lunatic?

Eight years. I waited for him for eight grueling years.

I worked until I gave myself a bleeding ulcer, just so he could study in peace, just so we could get married when he returned.

And my reward was being called a lunatic.

As Thomas grabbed his coat and bolted for the door, I scraped together the last ounce of breath in my lungs and screamed:

"Thomas! If you walk out that door today, we are dead to each other! We are done!"

I thought if I screamed loud enough, I might awaken some microscopic shred of guilt in his soul.

I thought it might make him turn around, look at the woman he had shattered, and give me the embrace I was owed after crossing an ocean and waiting a decade.

But no.

His broad shoulders tensed. He paused for exactly three seconds.

Then he walked out. He never looked back.

I lay paralyzed on the cold hospital bed, numbly pulling out my phone to text my mother.

Even though I knew, for the rest of my life, I would never get a reply.

Mom, the earring you left me got stolen today. Im so sorry.

How could he cheat on me? He almost died for me once. How do you just stop loving someone?

In the sterile quiet of the room, my mind drifted to the year my mother died.

My father, who I hadn't seen in years, suddenly kicked my door down. He claimed my mother had conned him out of half a million dollars before she died.

I took dozens of backhands to the face that day, screaming that dead women couldn't steal money.

He saw red. He picked up a jagged piece of concrete from the driveway and swung it at my head.

But Thomas threw his body over mine.

The rock tore a gaping hole in his scalp. Blood soaked his shirt, dripping onto my face, but he just smiled and wiped my tears away.

Don't cry, he had whispered. My Sabrina has to be strong.

My face was wet with tears now, but my spiraling memories were violently interrupted by a flicker on my phone screen.

(Typing...)

What?

How could it say typing?

A wave of absolute nausea hit me. I slapped a hand over my mouth and stumbled out into the hallway, sprinting for the public restrooms.

But as I rushed past the elevator banks, the doors slid open, revealing two impossibly familiar faces.

Mom? Thomas?

How is my mother alive? Why is she with Thomas!?

I froze, rooted to the linoleum floor. It felt like a million insects were crawling under my skin.

The moment my mothers eyes met mine, her pupils contracted in sheer terror.

But her first instinct was to step in front of the young woman beside her, shielding the baby in the girl's arms.

"Mom! Thomas! Seriously, I just had an upset stomach from those pastries, you guys didn't need to freak out. Let's just take the baby to pediatrics."

As they brushed past me, I got a crystal-clear look at the girl.

It was Melody.

The great love from Thomas's thesis.

My skull throbbed so violently I thought it would crack open. I clutched my chest, dropping to a crouch, gasping for air.

Before I could even process the reality fracturing around me, a pair of polished leather shoes stepped into my line of sight.

Thomass shadow fell over me. He stared down at me with cold, terrifying authority.

"Why are you still here?"

"Sabrina, why couldn't you just listen to me?"

I looked up at him, my eyes bloodshot and feral.

"Don't you owe me an explanation? My mother has been dead for eight years. How is she standing right there? Why is that woman calling her Mom?"

"You stole my boyfriend, and now youre stealing my mother too!?"

I lunged like a wild animal, grabbing Thomas by the collar, trying to push past him to demand why my mother had risen from the grave.

Suddenly, a sharp voice cracked like a whip behind me:

"Enough!"

It was my mother.

"Melody is sweeter than you. She's obedient. I prefer being by her side. Is that a crime?"

"Why do you have to come here and ruin our lives?" my mother hissed. "You're in America, she's in Europe. I split my time. Nobody was getting hurt. What was the problem with that?"

Thomas sighed. He wrapped his arms around my thrashing body, pinning me against his chest in a suffocating hug.

His warm breath hit my neck.

"I know it's a lot to process. Let me explain everything to you slowly, later. Okay?"

"Just go"

"Thomas!"

The rapid clicking of heels echoed down the hall.

Melody marched over, her face twisted in a scowl. She yanked Thomas away from me and delivered a stinging, open-handed slap across my cheek.

"So you're the 'friend' from back home, huh? If you're a psycho, go check yourself into a ward. You fly all the way here to seduce my husband?"

"Did you think I was just going to roll over?"

My cheek burned.

I raised my hand, fully intending to strike her back, but Thomass fingers clamped around my wrist like a vice.

"Apologize."

He stared me down, his jaw tight, eyes flashing with warning.

The air in the hallway turned to ice.

Melody patted Thomas's back, her tone shifting into a sickening, theatrical sweetness. "Oh, whatever. Let it go, Tommy. I won't stoop to her level."

"Hey. Look at this. Were having our wedding ceremony soon."

She thrust her left hand in my face, flashing a diamond the size of a crushed ice cube. She looked me up and down with blatant pity.

"You're actually pretty. Why are you so desperate to be a homewrecker?"

"Thomas and I have been together for eight years. We haven't had a single fight."

"Just because I told him I loved the weather here, he left his whole life behind. He's taken care of me and my mom for eight years."

"Do you really think a man like that would ever look at you?"

"And look at our baby. Isn't he perfect? Tommy said he hated the idea of me going through labor, so he made us wait until last year to have him. Otherwise, he'd be old enough to call you Auntie by now."

The blood in my veins turned to slush. I stood there, a hollow shell, letting her words wash over me.

My mother never died.

She had stolen my fathers money, faked her death, and fled to Europe with her secret, illegitimate daughter, Melody.

In my ten years with Thomas, I had gotten pregnant five times. Five quiet, sterile clinic visits. Five abortions.

The last time I got pregnant, I was thirty. I begged him to let us keep it. Thomas had sighed, looking deeply conflicted, and shook his head.

I don't like kids, Sab. And I'm just not ready to be a father.

It wasn't that he didn't like kids. He just didn't want my kids.

It wasn't that he had no vacation days. It wasn't that his thesis was delayed for six years. He simply had a family here.

Something inside me finally snapped, cleanly and quietly. I gave a slow nod, my voice raspy but impossibly calm.

"I'm sorry. I know I was wrong."

I was wrong to wait like a loyal, pathetic dog for eight years. I was wrong to spend every night of my twenties grieving a mother who had chosen to vanish.

I turned on my heel and started walking. But Melody called out to me.

She trotted up, pulling a heavy gold bracelet off her wrist and pressing it into my palm.

"You didn't know better. I forgive you."

"Tommy said you got mugged. Take this. Sell it for your cab fare to the airport. I can't give you my gold earrings, thoughthose are a gift from my mom!"

She gave me a playful wink, then spun around and tucked herself under Thomas's arm.

I looked down at the earrings dangling from her lobes.

They were the exact same design as the one I had lost.

No wonder Thomas told the police they weren't worth anything.

He knew. He always knew mine were fake.

The gold was fake. The love was fake. The blood in my veins felt like a lie.

The dark, starved beast that had been hibernating in my chest for ten years violently ripped its way out. It took total control of my limbs, turning me toward the emergency stairwell, forcing me to run toward the roof.

Outside the hospital.

The tension from the hallway had vanished, replaced by an uneasy silence between the three of them.

Melody dropped the sweet-girl act. She shoved Thomass shoulder, her brow furrowed.

"Why did you hug her back there? I saw it with my own eyes. You initiated that hug."

"And Mom. Why didn't you defend me when she tried to hit me? Why did you keep giving me that look to shut up?"

"Well?"

"Are you guys hiding something from me?"

Thomas was staring blankly at the pavement. He had thought that telling me the truth would finally lift the crushing weight off his chest.

It hadn't.

Right now, a cold, creeping panic was clawing up his throat.

"You two go ahead. I think I dropped my phone inside. I'm going to go look for it."

Thomas felt it in his boneshe had to go back and check on me. He needed to look me in the eyes and say the words I'm sorry.

Ignoring Melody's shrill protests, he turned and sprinted toward the sliding glass doors of the entrance.

Just as his foot crossed the threshold.

A body fell from the sky.

It smashed into the concrete, mere feet in front of him.

A horrific explosion of crimson and bone.