Chains in the Deep - Chapter 8

Later, Lucy met a boy her age who made her heart flutter.

She told Alistair, “I like the way that boy looks in a white shirt, like the light in his eyes, like his fluffy hair…”

Alistair listened and was stunned for a long time, eventually offering a few dry blessings before sinking into prolonged silence.

He sat there, his back radiating a heavy loneliness. Over forty, the years had etched traces of weariness on his face.

I walked over, hugged him from behind, and whispered softly, “In my eyes, you’ll always be that shining young man.”

Ha. But what am I in his eyes?

Our marriage continues.

Two years later, I met Marcus Cole again in a café. We arranged to meet.

Marcus got straight to the point: “Vivian, the second version… is it true?”

Regarding my story, he had clearly thought a lot, throwing out a series of questions:

“How could a nineteen-year-old girl spend so much time outside the hospital room spying on Alistair and his girlfriend? Don’t you have school?

“You say that growing up in a hospital made you see through human warmth and coldness, so you worry that love can’t withstand the test of illness. Ordinary people occasionally have such worries, but a healthy person wouldn’t let it become a long-term obsession.

“Why are you so pathologically fixated on this? Is there a deeper reason?

“Did you… really kill Alistair’s former girlfriend?”

Marcus’s sharp gaze scrutinized me: “Is that ‘second version’ true?”

I smiled with relief, “You are indeed perceptive. You always catch the details he can’t.”

“Then,” Marcus leaned forward slightly, “tell me the third version.”