The Wind Is Free, And So Are The Clouds

Mother died of cancer. Father fell into a deep depression and followed her soon after. Alone in the funeral parlor surrounded by white flowers, I called my husband, desperate to hear his voice. Instead, his words cut through the receiver like ice. "Is depression genetic in your family? If you are sick, go see a shrink. Do not drag other people down with you like your parents did." In the background, I heard his secretary, Beth, whine softly. "Mr. Sterling... my stomach hurts." His tone shifted instantly, growing impatient with me. "We have been in meetings all night. I have not even had time to eat. I do not have time to listen to you cry. Unless someone is dying, do not call me again." He hung up. I swallowed my grief, finalizing the funeral arrangements alone. Exhausted and having eaten nothing in three days, I collapsed in the hall. Waking in the ER, my phone lit up with a notification from Beth's livestream. On the screen, a man's hands wearing a platinum band identical to mine handed her a perfectly baked soufflé. Beth covered her mouth, eyes wide with feigned delight. "Wow! I casually mentioned I could not stomach my medicine without a dessert, and you actually baked this from scratch?" I looked at my own ring finger. My heart began to throb with a sharp, rhythmic pain. He was not too busy. He just did not love me anymore. 1 Realizing that his wedding band was visible to thousands of viewers, Karl quickly pulled his hand back. When his hand reappeared in the frame, the ring was gone. Only a pale indentation remained on his skin. This blatant attempt to hide his marriage pleased Beth immensely. Her coy giggles prompted Karl to reach out and pinch her cheek. His voice was dripping with affection. "Stop laughing like a fool. Did you not say you wanted this? Tell me how it tastes." "I failed over a hundred times at the bakery before I finally got this one right. If it is good, you have to be a good girl and drink your stomach medicine." Beth's face flushed red. She took a small bite of the souffle, chewing slowly. Karl stared at her, his eyes full of eager anticipation. He looked like a completely different person from the man who had just told me he was too busy to eat and too busy to listen to my grief. "Mr. Sterling, this is absolutely incredible!" Beth practically purred. "Whoever gets to be your wife will be the luckiest woman alive!" Lucky? We had been together for five years and married for three. Karl had never cooked a single meal for me. He always said he was busy. He said he was busy building an empire so I could be the envy of every woman in the city. He said his time was too valuable to waste on menial domestic tasks. But now, just to coax his secretary into taking her antacids, he had spent hours in a bakery learning how to make a souffle. He had the time to fail a hundred times over a dessert, but he did not have the time to attend my parents' funeral. He could not even spare a single word of comfort. Karl reached out and naturally wiped a smudge of powdered sugar off Beth's lip with his thumb. The live chat exploded. [Do not use your hands! Use your mouth! Kiss her!] Beth smiled wickedly and took another messy bite, intentionally getting more sugar on her lips. The chat went wild. [Here is your second chance! Do not mess it up this time!] The camera suddenly jerked, and the livestream abruptly ended. But that quick camera movement was enough for me to recognize the background. Beth was admitted to the exact same hospital as me. Driven by a morbid curiosity, I dragged my exhausted body down the hall to her VIP suite. Through the glass window on the door, I saw Karl rubbing a smudge of red lipstick off his mouth. His face was slightly flushed. "Beth, that was the last time." "I have to go check on Sienna in a bit. I heard she fainted at the funeral." The moment he mentioned my name, all the gentleness vanished from his voice, replaced by heavy exhaustion. Beth's smile froze. She immediately pushed the dessert tray away. "Then you should hurry up and go be with your wife. Why are you wasting time baking for me?" He twisted the wedding ring he had put back on his finger and let out a long sigh. "There is no rush. I will go see her after you drink your medicine and your stomach stops hurting." My eyes fell on the small plastic cup of medicine on her nightstand. I had taken that exact same gastric coating liquid before. It was barely a mouthful, and it did not even taste bitter. But Beth held the cup for a long time, her pretty face scrunching up in dramatic disgust. Karl, a man completely devoid of patience, coaxed her softly. "Just drink it like a good girl, and I will stay with you for another hour." Beth finally smiled and brought the cup to her lips. My heart twisted like a wet rag. I turned to walk away, but my legs gave out. I collapsed backward, desperately grabbing the metal door handle on my way down to break my fall. The door swung open with a loud crash. Startled by the noise, Beth choked on her medicine, coughing until her face turned bright red. Karl spent a good minute patting her back before he finally turned to look at the doorway. "Sienna?" I was sprawled on the cold linoleum floor, completely drained of strength, black spots dancing in my vision. But I could still see the absolute icy contempt in Karl's eyes. "What exactly are you doing?" he demanded. "Throwing a pity party to get sympathy? Or are you just trying to scare Beth?" "I did not..." I whispered weakly. He ignored me and yelled down the hall for a nurse. "Get her out of here. Do not let her disturb the other patients." The approaching nurse assumed we were strangers. She hurriedly apologized to him. "Sir, I am so sorry she disturbed you and your wife. I will take her back to her room right now." Karl did not correct her assumption. As the nurse helped me out of the room, she pulled out my phone to call my emergency contact. "Hello? Where are you? Your wife just collapsed again in the hallway..." Karl's voice boomed through the receiver. "Sienna! Are you ever going to stop this nonsense?" Hearing the exact same angry voice coming from the phone and the room behind her, the nurse froze in absolute shock. "That guy in there... is your husband?" I forced a weak smile. "Not for much longer." The nurse saw the utter desolation in my eyes. She hung up the phone and silently helped me back to the IV room. I was physically exhausted, but sleep refused to come. Instead, I pulled out my phone and texted my lawyer. [Draft a divorce agreement.] I did not fall into a heavy sleep until the PDF arrived and I digitally signed it. I slept so deeply that I did not realize the IV needle had slipped out of my vein. The fluid had pooled under my skin, forming a painful lump the size of a golf ball on the back of my hand. I woke up to a sharp, throbbing pain just as Karl pushed the door open. He glanced at my swollen hand. Not a flicker of concern crossed his face. "Did you time this perfectly just for my arrival?" "It is just a little saline drip, Sienna. Your desperate attempts to play the victim are getting ridiculous." He did not call a nurse. He did not ask if it hurt. He simply reached over and aggressively yanked the needle out of my flesh. The sudden violence of his movement caused a spray of blood droplets to shoot from the puncture wound. A few drops landed on his crisp white dress shirt. Karl, a notorious germaphobe, scowled deeply. "Sienna! Have you had enough of this tantrum?" I stared blankly at the blood still welling up from my hand. It felt like I was watching my own heart bleed out. "What tantrum, Karl?" He told me he was too busy with meetings to comfort me, so I handled my parents' funeral entirely on my own. He took off his wedding ring to flirt with his secretary, and I did not expose him. He told me not to disturb Beth's rest, so I obediently walked away with the nurse. He forcefully ripped a needle out of my vein, and I did not utter a single cry of pain. What exactly did he want from me? "You have the nerve to ask me that? I told you not to call unless it was an absolute emergency, and you had your relatives blow up my phone a dozen times!" "Why can you not be understanding like Beth? Why do you constantly force me to deal with your petty, meaningless drama?" My chest tightened again. So, his secretary throwing a fit over stomach medicine required him to bake a souffle and coax her like a child. That was called being "understanding." But me, silently burying my parents and bearing the weight of the world alone, was considered "meaningless drama." I pulled the printed divorce agreement from the bedside table and handed it to him. "Sign it. You will never have to deal with my drama again." A flash of shock crossed his irritated eyes, quickly replaced by intense disgust. "Sienna! First the pity play, now you are threatening me with a divorce? Are you just going down a checklist of manipulation tactics?" "I am out there breaking my back every single day to give you a perfect life. Endless meetings, endless client dinners, endless proposals. And what do you do?" "You stay at home. You water the flowers. You bask in the sun and play the elegant Mrs. Sterling. What exactly are you so dissatisfied with?" I watched his lips move, feeling like I had been plunged into an ice bath. "Karl, just because I do not commute to the corporate office does not mean I sit around doing nothing. Every single flagship product design your company launched this year was drafted and finalized by me." "It has been five years. Did I ask to stay home? You begged me to work remotely so I could curate your precious exotic greenhouse. You needed me here to bathe and feed your stroke-survivor mother. You needed me to watch your Alzheimer's-stricken father so he would not wander into traffic!" "Does everything I sacrificed for this family mean absolutely nothing to you?" He grabbed a tissue and tossed it onto my lap. "Enough. There is no point in talking to you. You refuse to understand my pressure, and I refuse to validate your delusions. You always play the victim. You only ever complain instead of actually solving the problem." "If you want to enjoy the status and luxury of being my wife, you need to prove you deserve to stand beside me." "Do you really think your current behavior makes you worthy?" He was not asking a question. He had already decided I was guilty. I smiled bitterly and wiped a stray tear from my cheek. "You are right. I am not worthy. Please, just sign the papers." He snatched the divorce agreement, flipped through the first two pages, and tossed it straight into the garbage can. "Do not throw the word divorce around lightly. Because the second I actually take you seriously, there will be no turning back." "I am not going to let the media say I abandoned my wife the moment her parents died." "While you were busy with the funeral, Beth hired a private nurse to look after my parents. She even went to our house to tend to your greenhouse. I was checking in on her out of gratitude. Stop letting your paranoia run wild." "I brought a gift. Once you fix your attitude, you are going to go over to her room and properly thank her." So, taking care of his parents and my plants was framed as a favor to me. How utterly laughable. Before I could refuse, he pulled a velvet box from his pocket and popped it open. The contents instantly pierced my eyes. Inside was the finished product of the third-anniversary diamond ring I had designed myself. It was supposed to be a matching set, but when my mother got sick, I only had time to forge the women's band. "Do you still want me to make the men's band?" I asked, suppressing the bitter taste of bile in my mouth. He pulled his current wedding ring off and showed me the red indentation on his finger. "Yes. This one is getting a little tight. I need the new one." He said it so casually, completely oblivious to the sacred meaning behind a custom set of vows in metal. "Fine. Sign the divorce papers, and I will make it." Karl scowled, but a smug smirk touched the corner of his lips. "Sienna, stop throwing a tantrum. I promised your parents I would take care of you for the rest of your life. As long as you finish my ring, I will clear my schedule and attend your parents' memorial service next week." I stared at the man I had loved for eight years. For the first time, he looked like a terrifying stranger. "Fine." I would make the ring. But I did not need his care anymore. He looked at my compromise with a knowing, victorious expression. "If you wanted me to attend the memorial, you should have just asked nicely. Why did you have to put on this massive theatrical performance? You are so exhausting." "Do you not know that the squeaky wheel gets the grease?" I actually laughed out loud. So, getting a son-in-law to attend the final rites of his wife's parents required me to get on my knees and beg for his charity. But I had begged him. And what did he do? "I called you. What did you say to me?" Karl rubbed his temples, completely losing his patience. "I am busy. I am exhausted. Why can you not just be mature? Look at Beth..." Since the moment he walked into my hospital room, he had not offered a single word of comfort. His entire objective was to force me to hand over the women's ring—the ring I designed for myself—to Beth, and then guilt me into finishing his matching band. My parents' death was nothing but a bargaining chip to him. Suddenly, a massive commotion erupted in the hallway outside. Someone was screaming about jumping out of a window. "Do not stop me! Mr. Sterling and I are completely innocent, but his wife is texting me, calling me a homewrecker! I cannot live with this humiliation!" Hearing Beth's hysterical cries, Karl's face drained of color. He shot me a death glare and sprinted out of the room. I had no interest in watching their soap opera. I walked out to the nurses' station to get a bandage for my bleeding hand. The young nurse carefully cleaned the dried blood, whispering furiously. "Ma'am, your husband's secretary is a piece of work! The second she saw him walk into your room, she started this whole suicide act!" "You cannot divorce him. Do not let that manipulative snake win!" I thanked the nurse for her kindness and turned back to my room. But the moment I sat on the edge of the bed, Karl stormed in, his face twisted in absolute fury. He grabbed my arm and violently yanked me to my feet. "Get up. You are going to apologize to Beth right now." "And I am warning you, if you send her one more disgusting, abusive text, I will let her press charges against you for harassment." "And do not expect me to protect you. And definitely do not expect me to show up at your parents' memorial!" That was when I realized Beth had received anonymous hate texts after I left, calling her a mistress. "I did not send those texts..." "Shut up! You are still lying!" "Do not think I do not know you faked fainting just to spy on Beth and me! I was willing to let it slide, but this crosses the line!" Seeing my desolate expression, his tone softened slightly, though it remained frozen in authority. "Enough. Just go apologize to her, and I will take your side and protect you from the fallout. After all, you just lost your parents, and you probably inherited their mental instability..." I stood absolutely still. Suddenly, I lost all desire to defend myself. Blindly accusing me of a crime without a shred of evidence—that was what Karl called "taking my side." And he finally acknowledged the pain of losing my parents, but only to use it as an excuse to force me into soothing Beth's ego. I did not know how he dragged me down the hall to her room. All I knew was the sudden, sharp pain in my knees. When I blinked, I realized I was kneeling on the floor beside Beth's hospital bed. Karl shoved the velvet ring box into my hands, his voice a harsh command. "Did you not say you were going to thank her? Do it." I let out a hollow, broken laugh. I opened the velvet box and held it up toward Beth. "I wish you both a lifetime of happiness." Before Karl could process his shock, I pushed myself off the floor and bolted for the door. Karl stuck his foot out and tripped me. I crashed hard into the doorframe. "Sienna!" he roared. "Is that your idea of an apology? Get back here and do it right!" Beth quickly grabbed his arm, tears streaming down her perfectly applied makeup. "Mr. Sterling, please do not be mad! She is just grieving. I do not blame her... as long as she stops calling me a homewrecker..." Her brilliant display of fake grace and kindness moved Karl deeply. "Do not worry. If she ever insults you again, I will make her regret it for the rest of her life." Right as he said that, a group of loud, aggressive people stormed into the hospital room. They claimed to be my relatives. They started hurling raw eggs and wilted lettuce at Beth. "You cheap homewrecker! You really know how to sink your claws into a man! You completely brainwashed Mr. Sterling!" Karl quickly shielded Beth with his own body. Egg yolks and trash splattered across his expensive suit and face. Beth pushed weakly against his chest. "Mr. Sterling, get out of the way! They are here for me!" Karl held her tighter, shouting at the crowd. "I will say this one last time! Beth is not a homewrecker!" "Sienna, call off your insane family right now! Or I swear to God I am calling the police!" I looked at the screaming mob. I had never seen any of these people in my life. Tears of hysterical laughter pricked my eyes. "They are not my relatives. I do not know them!" The mob instantly turned toward me, their voices dripping with fake sympathy. "Oh, Sienna, do not be scared! We are here for you! We will not let anyone bully you!" Then they turned their wrath back on Karl. "Mr. Sterling, out of respect for Sienna, we will not hurt you. But you need to step aside and let us teach this trash a lesson! If she had not seduced you, you would have been at the funeral to send off Sienna's parents! She reeks of cheap perfume. Can you not smell it?" One of the women pulled out a phone and started recording Beth's egg-covered face. "A slut like you deserves to die!" "But before you do, the whole internet is going to see exactly what you are!" Karl, realizing this mob was utterly unhinged, immediately pulled out his phone and dialed 911. Beth snatched the phone out of his hand, weeping violently. "Mr. Sterling, no! Just let it go! It is all my fault. Do not ruin your marriage over me..." But Karl snatched the phone back and hit send. Beth's face paled dramatically. She looked at the mob, her voice trembling. "You guys need to get Sienna out of here right now! If Mr. Sterling gets the cops involved, you will all go to jail!" The "relatives" who had just sworn to defend my honor instantly grabbed me by the arms and dragged me toward the exit. Realizing something was horribly wrong, I thrashed wildly, screaming at Karl. "I really do not know them! Help me!" Karl just sneered in disgust. "Your shamelessness truly knows no bounds." A sweaty hand clamped hard over my mouth. I was dragged into the service elevator. Within seconds, a sickeningly sweet chemical smell filled my nose, and my vision faded to black. Total despair washed over me. Was I really going to be kidnapped in broad daylight while my husband watched? When I finally woke up and saw my surroundings, my blood ran cold.