Chapter 16 Monroe
A month later…
I wake up alone.
Again.
Jin’s side of the bed is cold, the sheets straight and unrumpled. I reach out and press my palm to his pillow as if I can feel him. As if he’s right here with me and there isn’t an empty space next to me.
Instead, the cold chill from the untouched pillow runs straight through me.
He didn’t come home last night. Or if he did, it was after I finally surrendered to exhaustion and fell asleep, and he made sure to be gone again before dawn.
I don’t know where he is or when he’ll be back. I stopped asking those questions weeks ago, because the answers never came.
It’s getting harder to find the energy to get out of bed. I never imagined simple actions like getting up and making the bed or even taking a shower could be so difficult. That I’d have to mentally prepare and urge myself just to do these things.
If I had the option to close my eyes and go back to sleep I would. But then I’m trapped in my head. I’m forced to agonize over the past month and the tragedy that’s struck our lives when it seemed like we were just reaching our happy ending.
At least when I’m up, I can distract myself—or exhaust myself enough that I’ll eventually be too tired to relive what’s happened again.
I’ve relived that moment enough times to last me a lifetime. I’m still not sure how or what or why, and I’ve spent a lot of time wondering this.
Not just to myself or to doctors but even to God. I’ve never been the most religious person, but loss has often left me asking the same question.
When I lost Dad and then when Eli passed. Now again.
Why would this happen to us? Why would it happen to me? What have I done to deserve this? What did my precious baby, who was innocent and defenseless and had an entire life ahead of him, possibly do to—
My heart aches so deeply, it’s almost unbearable. It more than hurts to breathe as I close my eyes and take the breaths slowly.
One at a time as if the process is so complex. But really I’m just that broke down.
At some point, I find the strength to drag myself out of bed. I cross the room to the windows and wrench the curtains apart, the morning light too bright and blinding.
It feels unnatural in the wake of what’s happened. Springtime when the season couldn’t feel more like winter.
I move through the rest of my morning routine on autopilot. Brush my teeth. Wash my face. Avoid looking too long at my reflection because the woman staring back at me has sad, hollow eyes and a grief-stricken heaviness to her face that no amount of concealer can hide.
The hallway stretches before me as I make my way to the kitchen, dragging my feet. My gaze remains fixed straight ahead, avoiding the door to the left. The same room I’d spent recent weeks so excited to decorate.
I haven’t had the heart to go inside. So it’s remained frozen in time for now, a half decorated space for a precious boy I never got to meet…
Dr. Gong tried to explain it to me afterward, her tone gentle and apologetic. They’d found an unknown substance in my bloodwork—something they couldn’t identify, and that had spread through my system before they could fully analyze it. They didn’t know what it was or where it came from.
What they knew was it affected my baby and his heart had suddenly stopped.
When I was sent home the first time, they didn’t even realize he was in imminent danger. I didn’t even know he was gone until after we returned to run the other tests Dr. Gong had suggested.
Despite everything they tried, they couldn’t save him. He was already gone, lost within a few minutes.
No closure. No answers. Just grief with nowhere to go.
It feels maddening knowing he was inside me and I couldn’t help him. That he just slipped away when that same morning he’d been so alive. Kicking and squirming in my belly and making me smile.
I’ve tried to grieve with Jin, hoping we could share the unbearable weight together. We could navigate our way through it… if at all possible.
But he won’t let me in. He’s become a ghost—disappearing for hours or entire nights, returning with blood on his clothes and detached energy.
When I ask where he’s been, he deflects or says nothing at all. He refuses to go to counseling or to show his grief. Any time I reach for him, he turns away.
It’s as if our son didn’t just slip through my fingers, now Jin is too, and I don’t know how to hold on anymore.
Mom’s already in the kitchen when I pad into the room. She’s made coffee and eggs, the only one of us who has truly tried to be uplifting in this messy storm we’ve found ourselves in.
At least she does her best—her sadness is hardly concealed, even as she does what mothers do and tries to be my rock.
“Have some, Moni,” she says softly. As I slide into a chair at the table, she walks the plate of eggs over and then caresses my curls. “You skipped dinner last night, remember?”
I give a hapless shrug and stare at the plate of eggs, no appetite to be found.
She takes the seat across from mine, nursing her mug of coffee. “Did he come home last night?”
I shake my head.
She sighs deeply but then falls silent as if deciding what to say. She’s tried to talk to Jin too, in her own way, but he’s as unreachable with her as he is with me.
“Maybe he just needs more time,” she offers finally. “Men grieve differently, baby. Some of them... they don’t know how to process their feelings. They push it all down, try to stay strong, and it comes out sideways.”
“It’s been a month, Mom,” I answer, sounding harsher than I intend to. “I’ve given him time. I’ve given him space. He’s pushed me away and refuses to even talk about it.”
“Have you thought about counseling for yourself?” she asks. “Even if he won’t go?”
“I’ve thought about it.” I swallow past the thick lump in my throat. “I’ve thought about a lot of things.”
“Like what, Moni?”
“Maybe… I don’t know… maybe going home. My real home. Back to Philly.”
“But you love it here—” she starts, and then she cuts herself off as if realizing she can’t push too hard. Her brows connect in a worried line and she tries a different approach. “You both need time. That’s all. Everything’s still fresh.”
My phone buzzes on the table, interrupting the moment. I glance at the screen and see Kelly’s name, accompanied by a string of heart emojis and a message checking in on me.
Hey Monroe
Thinking of u
Here if you need me
Maybe we can go for coffee? No pressure
I pause, debating if I even want to bother with a response. Then I quickly type back something generic.
Yeah maybe sometime…
Kelly’s been checking in regularly since the miscarriage, offering to bring food or come over or just sit with me in silence if that’s what I need. She’s offered to take me out to get my mind off things.
Though deep down I appreciate the effort, I’m just not in the mood. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be.
Maybe this can’t be fixed; maybe this is one of those things that stays with you for the rest of your life…
Jin comes home minutes before three in the morning.
I’m waiting for him in the living room, curled up on the couch with a blanket swathed over my lap and the television playing a K-drama I stopped paying attention to hours ago.
I told myself it wouldn’t be worth waiting up again. He’ll just do what he’s made a habit of and avoid any real interaction. He’ll go straight to the shower and then to bed as if there isn’t this huge trauma between us we need to heal from.
The lock clicks and the door swings open. Jin stalks inside looking like hell.
His shirt is soaked with blood—obviously not his own—and his knuckles are split and swollen, the skin broken and raw. His dark hair is more disheveled than usual, falling into eyes that are distant and emotionless.
He doesn’t acknowledge me as he crosses the room, sparing me no glance at all. He’s heading straight for the bathroom like he usually does.
I push myself off the couch and follow him.
“Where have you been?”
He doesn’t answer, footsteps away from the hallway when I reach him.
“Jin!” I yell, sidestepping in front of him. “Where have you been?”
“You know where. Work.”
“Work?” I repeat with a disbelieving shake of my head. I gesture at his battered knuckles and the blood wetting his shirt. “You call disappearing until three in the morning work? What about me? What about—”
“You don’t need to wait up for me,” he interrupts. “I never asked you to. Go to bed. Get some rest.”
“I can’t sleep when I don’t know if you’re alive or dead!” I snap, throwing up my arms. “How am I supposed to when my fiancé disappears for hours and comes home covered in blood and won’t say a single word about where he’s been or what he’s doing!”
“You know what I do. You know I can’t tell you. You made the decision to accept that when you decided to be with me—don’t expect any differently now.”
His tone is cold and dismissive. It’s a callback to how he once spoke to me.
Back when I was convinced we were enemies; when he wanted to kill me and inked the inside of my wrist with a death mark.
He was cold then too. Cruel.
He spoke to me as if I were pathetic and he considered me a waste of air. For a long while, until his icy disposition finally melted, I thought he hated me.
Taken aback by the pivot into cold detachment, my pulse races. My eyes start to itch even as I blink a few times and urge myself to stay strong.
But it hurts.
…it hurts that he could still treat me this way. That so easily he could revert back to the old, heartless Jin who seemed to want to crush me like an insect.
“Jin,” I croak almost in a whining tone. I draw a wavering breath, blinking up at him as tears finally come. “How could you… our baby… we… we…”
“I’ve told you before, there’s nothing more to say about it,” he says. “You can handle it your way. I will handle it mine. But there’s no changing it, Monroe.”
“How could you say that? How can you just check out like that? We lost our son, Jin. We need to go to counseling. We need to talk about it. To grieve over it. Together.”
His dark eyes finally flicker with heavy emotion I can’t place before it’s extinguished. Gone so fast it’s possible I’m seeing what I want to see.
“Talking won’t bring him back,” he says, his tone hard. “Nothing will. That’s what you don’t seem to realize.”
“That’s not the point!”
“Then what is the point? Hurry up. Tell me. What do you want from me? Would it help if I cry too? If I spend days in bed and mourn? If I sit on some couch with some shrink and let him pick apart what’s inside my head?
” he rants suddenly, taking a step closer, holding my gaze.
“Tell me what the fuck you want, Monroe, and I’ll give it to you. ”
“I want you to be my partner!” I blurt out in a scream. “I want to face this together! Why is that so hard for you to do?”
“Because this is who I am!” he retorts, raising his voice to compete with mine.
It’s a rarity, one of the only times he’s ever done so.
It doesn’t even seem to register that he has; that he’s allowed this crack in his cold, aloof composure.
He simply takes yet another step toward me and sneers, “You don’t seem to understand I can’t change myself.
You’ve fooled yourself otherwise. You thought you could have a normal happy life with me.
“But you were wrong—we were both wrong. This is who I am. Who I’ve always been. Men like me don’t get happy endings. I know that now. I was stupid to ever think otherwise, and so were you.”
I’m struck speechless, heart racing and nerves shot. It feels like I’ve been electrocuted, my brain hazy and frazzled and my pulse out of control.
Then there’s the pain. The hurt from losing our son. From losing Jin too.
When I try to inhale, it’s more of a sputtering breath. It’s interrupted by the sob I’ve been holding in now trying to make its way out.
“You… you don’t mean that…” I mumble, shaking my head. “Jin… please…”
“I do mean it. It’s the truth,” he says plainly. His jaw tightens, his dark eyes still unblinkingly meeting my teary ones. “Look at me, Monroe. Really look. What do you see? I’m a killer. A criminal. I’m meant to live that lifestyle. I’m not meant to be what you thought I was.”
“You were going to try! You promised me you would try! You said you wanted this—wanted us to be a family—”
“And look where that got us. Our son is dead. I couldn’t protect him. If you stay with me, it will only get worse. You’ll be next.”
“So that’s it?” I stare at him through lashes stuck together by tears, my throat aching. “You’re officially giving up?”
He merely stares, not providing an answer. But his silence is enough.
It tells me what I need to know.
Our relationship is dead. It died the same day as our son.
This… this is no longer fixable, and I have no more energy to even try anymore.
My right hand moves toward my left. I tug at the engagement ring on my finger, pulling it off and then grabbing his bloody, bruised hand.
I press the cool metal ring into his palm and close his long fingers around it.
“Then… then it’s over, Jin,” I say. “I can’t do this anymore, and you don’t want to either. I love you… but I can’t have a happy ending with a man who won’t let himself have one.”
He stares down at the ring in his hand, his expression unreadable.
“I’m leaving,” I continue. “First thing tomorrow. My mom and I will find somewhere else to stay.”
I turn from him and start down the hall, halting for a split second when I realize we haven’t been alone.
This entire time Mom’s been watching from the doorway of the guest room, her eyes round and misty, a deep frown on her face.
I know even at a glance that she’s heartbroken too; she understands what’s just happened.
…how serious this is. That this is final.
It’s really over.
I press on, hurrying down the hall until I reach our bedroom and close the door.