I woke up to the gentle brush of lips on my cheek. Keon was already dressed, ready to rush out the door. His face held a mix of apology and urgency. The early morning light barely touched the window panes, and I understood that once again he was leaving for work earlier than usual.

“I’m sorry, Zola,” he whispered, kissing me again. “They moved the big meeting up to 9:00 a.m. I’ll try to get back as soon as I can. I promise. Today is your day. Our day.”

It was my 42nd birthday. Not a milestone number or a grand anniversary, but Keon had always made a big deal out of my birthdays. In 18 years of marriage, he had never once forgotten to wish me well. He’d never failed to show me his attention, give me a gift, or offer that special look that said more than a thousand words.

“It’s fine,” I smiled, though a slight disappointment flickered inside. “I get it. Work is work.”

He kissed me one last time, this time on the lips, and I caught the familiar scent of his cologne, the one he’d worn for three years, the same one I’d bought him for our wedding anniversary. He hadn’t changed it since. It was so typical of Keon to find something he liked and remain loyal to his choice.

“Tonight, we’ll have time just for the two of us,” he promised. “I’ll make your favorite dish and open that bottle of wine we always have for celebrations. Everything will be perfect.”

When the front door closed behind him, I lay in bed for a while longer, staring at the ceiling. Forty-two years old.

By that age, my mother had already had my younger sister and me. She’d established a career and bought a condo. And what had I accomplished in all these years? Still, complaining would be a sin. I had a husband who loved me, a solid job at a major insurance firm, and a home in a decent neighborhood in Atlanta, even if it wasn’t huge.

We could never have children, but Keon and I had accepted that a long time ago. Sometimes I felt that it had even brought us closer, just the two of us against the world, our small, unbreakable fortress.

I got up, took a shower, and brewed a strong cup of coffee. A birthday on a weekday had always felt a little sad to me. Everyone is busy at work, caught up in their own lives, and you’re just there in the middle of your daily routine, trying to feel like it’s a special day. But who remembers besides you and your loved ones?

At the office, my colleague Briana greeted me with a small bouquet of flowers and a little cake she’d picked up. We celebrated with coffee in the break room, chatting about the latest industry news, and laughing about our boss’s latest eccentric move. Everything was familiar, warm, and comforting.

But the whole time, my thoughts were focused on the evening, on Keon making dinner, on the two of us sitting together by candlelight, and on him opening that specific bottle of our favorite wine.

That wine had become a kind of tradition for us. We first opened it on our first wedding anniversary, randomly selecting a California Cabernet Reserve from a specialty liquor store. We loved it so much that we decided to buy the exact same bottle for every celebration.

Keon’s birthday, my birthday, our anniversary, New Year’s Eve. Always the same wine. It was our small family ritual. Something that united us and reminded us of our first years of marriage, that time when everything was simple and clear.

When I got home around 6:00 p.m., I found that Keon was already there. A delicious smell wafted from the kitchen, and I smiled, imagining him carefully preparing something special. My heart swelled with warmth. There was my Keon, always dependable, always thoughtful.

“Zola,” he called from the kitchen. “You’re home. Great, go get dressed up. I’m almost finished.”

I went to the bedroom and chose a deep blue dress that Keon always adored. I touched up my makeup and let my hair down. Looking at myself in the mirror, I thought about how fast time flies. Fine lines were starting to appear around my eyes. Gray hairs were showing at my temples despite regular coloring.

Forty-two wasn’t youth, but it wasn’t old age either. It was a strange in-between age where you no longer held illusions about the future but still believed there was time left for happiness.

When I stepped out of the bedroom, Keon had already set the table in the dining room: candles, a white tablecloth, and beautiful china. On the table were plates of roasted sea bass, my favorite, a salad, freshly baked cornbread, and of course that bottle of wine.

The familiar label, the familiar shape of the bottle. How many times had we opened it over the years? Twenty, thirty, more?

“My goodness, Keon, this is beautiful,” I sighed, walking toward him.

He embraced me. For an instant, I nestled against his chest, feeling all the day’s exhaustion melt away.

“Only the best for my favorite woman,” he said, kissing the top of my head. “Sit down. I’m going to open the wine.”

I sat at the table, admiring all the splendor he had created for me. Keon grabbed the corkscrew and, with a practiced movement, opened the bottle. The characteristic pop, a familiar sound I’d heard so many times.

He poured the wine into the glasses, placed mine in front of me, and his across the table.

“To you, Zola,” he said, raising his glass. “To my love, my beauty, my wife, for being with me all these years, for giving meaning to my life.”

I smiled, feeling my eyes fill with tears. Not tears of sadness, but of pure happiness, of that simple domestic joy, of knowing that I wasn’t alone, that I had a man beside me who loved me.

We clinked glasses, and I brought mine to my lips. But before taking a sip, I caught the aroma and froze.

Something wasn’t right.

The wine had always smelled the same: light notes of cherry, oak, and spice. I knew that scent by heart. I could recognize it among hundreds. But now there was something else. Something strange, barely noticeable, but definitely present. A bitter, chemical, almost medicinal undertone hidden beneath the familiar notes of the wine.

I looked up at Keon. He had already taken a small sip of his glass and was looking at me with a smile, waiting for me to try mine.

“Is something wrong?” he asked, noticing my confusion.

I brought the glass back to my nose and inhaled. Definitely, something was off.

Maybe the wine had gone bad, but we always stored it properly in a cool place, and a reserve wine like this has a huge shelf life. Maybe the producers had changed the formula, but if so, why was the smell so strange? Almost alarming.

“Zola,” Keon repeated, a note of worry entering his voice. “Are you okay?”

I looked at his glass, then at mine. The same bottle, the same wine. But why did the smell from my glass seem different?

Maybe I was imagining it. Maybe I was too tired and my sense of smell was playing tricks on me.

“I’m fine,” I said, but I didn’t drink. “It’s just… the wine has a strange aroma. Don’t you smell it?”

Keon frowned and brought his glass to his nose.

“No, it seems fine to me. Our usual wine. Maybe your nose is congested or you’re wearing a different perfume today.”

I shook my head. The perfume was the same, and my nose wasn’t congested. I distinctly smelled that odd odor, but it was so faint, so subtle, that I began to doubt my own senses.

And then suddenly, a wild, absurd thought crossed my mind.

What if there’s something in my glass? What if someone put something in it?

But that was crazy. Who could have done that? Keon, my husband, whom I’d lived with for 18 years?

I looked at him. He was across from me, eating the fish, smiling at me. Everything was as usual. No trace of nervousness, not a shadow of anxiety in his eyes. Just a normal evening, a normal celebration.

Suddenly, I felt like an idiot for having such suspicions. What was wrong with me? Why had I become so paranoid?

But the smell didn’t go away. It was there in my glass—subtle, almost imperceptible, yet definitely present.

“Keon,” I said slowly. “Where did you buy this wine?”

He looked up from his plate, seeming a little surprised by my question.

“At our usual specialty store, the one we always go to. Why?”

“It just smells different to me.”

Keon smelled his wine again and shrugged.

“It seems normal to me. Maybe it’s a different batch or vintage, although no, the label says the same year. That’s weird.”

He took another sip, and I watched the movement of his throat as he swallowed. If there was anything wrong with the wine, he would have noticed. He would have told me, right?

Or perhaps the problem was only in my glass.

That idea hit me with such force that I nearly dropped my glass. Only my glass—not the wine in the bottle, not both glasses, but specifically mine.

I looked toward the kitchen, trying to remember. Keon had served the wine here in the dining room. I had seen him, but the glasses had been in the kitchen before that. He could have…

No. It was absurd. Complete madness.

But I couldn’t shake the thought, and the more I considered it, the more uneasy I became.

What if? What if someone really had put something in my glass? But why? And who?

The only person who had been home before me was Keon.

I looked at my husband. He was eating his dinner, looking completely calm, relaxed. Truly, I was losing my mind. Maybe I should just drink the wine and stop inventing nonsense.

But the fear that had taken root inside me wouldn’t let me. My survival instinct screamed, “Don’t drink. Something is wrong.”

“Keon,” I said, trying to keep my voice light and nonchalant. “I think I accidentally picked up your glass. Let’s switch.”

It was a lie. I had clearly seen which glass he placed in front of me and which in front of him, but I needed to check. I needed to ensure I was just being paranoid, that it was all the result of my fevered imagination.

Keon looked up, seeming slightly surprised.

“Are you sure? I think we both have our own.”

“No, no, I’m sure I mixed them up,” I insisted, offering him my glass and taking his. “Come on, let’s switch.”

For a fraction of a second, something appeared on his face. Something I couldn’t immediately identify. Surprise, anxiety, irritation—or was I imagining it again?

“All right,” he said, shrugging, and took my glass.

I raised his glass to my nose. I inhaled pure wine. Only wine. No strange smell, no weird chemical note, just our beloved California Cabernet Reserve.

My heart started beating faster. So, I hadn’t gone crazy. So, there really was something in my glass.

But what? And most importantly, why?

I watched as Keon brought my glass—the one that was now his—to his lips, took a small sip, and swallowed. His face didn’t change. He didn’t hesitate. He seemed to have noticed nothing unusual, or he was simply very good at hiding his emotions.

“See? Everything’s normal,” he said, setting the glass down. “It’s our usual wine. Are you tired, Zola? Too many work worries, too much stress.”

Maybe he was right. Maybe I was exhausted and my imagination had run wild. Maybe there was no strange smell and I had fabricated everything.

But then, why couldn’t I shake that feeling of alarm?

Because every cell in my body screamed that something was terribly wrong.

We continued dinner. I ate the fish, which was genuinely delicious. I drank the wine from Keon’s glass, which tasted absolutely normal. We talked about work, weekend plans, a new series he wanted to watch. Everything was normal. Everything was as usual, but I couldn’t relax.

I watched Keon out of the corner of my eye, noting every small detail. How he held the glass, how often he drank, how he looked at me.

About ten minutes passed since we switched glasses, maybe a little less. Keon was telling me an anecdote from work, something about a new employee who was always late. I nodded, pretending to listen, but all my thoughts were elsewhere.

And then he cut off mid-sentence.

He just stopped, as if he had forgotten what he was talking about. I looked up and saw that his face had noticeably paled and beads of sweat were forming on his forehead.

“Keon?” I asked, and my heart sank. “Are you okay?”

He ran a hand over his face as if trying to wipe away something invisible.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I… I feel strange. My head is spinning.”

I jumped out of my chair and rushed toward him. His skin was damp and cold. His eyes looked a little unfocused.

“Maybe it’s just exhaustion,” I suggested, though panic was growing inside me. It wasn’t just exhaustion. It was something else.

“Zola,” he said, a note of fear entering his voice. “I feel really sick.”

He tried to stand up, but his legs gave way and he slumped heavily back into the chair. I grabbed his hand and felt his pulse quicken, becoming erratic.

“Keon, what’s wrong? What do you feel?”

“Nausea,” he managed to say. “And a very strong dizziness… and a strange pressure in my chest, like something is squeezing it.”

My God. My God.

It was whatever was in my glass. What was supposed to have affected me, but instead affected him when we switched.

“I’m calling an ambulance,” I said, pulling out my phone with trembling hands.

“No,” Keon tried to object. “Maybe it’s just something I ate.”

“Keon, you’re pale as a ghost and you’re getting worse. I’m calling an ambulance right now.”

I dialed 911 and waited for the operator to answer. In a voice that sounded surprisingly calm given my internal turmoil, I explained the situation. My husband had suddenly become ill—dizziness, nausea, chest pain, possible intoxication.

The word intoxication hung in the air between us.

When I hung up, Keon was staring at me with wide eyes.

“Intoxication,” he repeated. “But from what? We ate the same thing.”

Yes, we had eaten the same thing. But we had drunk from different glasses. The glasses we had exchanged. And it was precisely after drinking from my glass that he had fallen ill.

“Keon,” I said, kneeling beside him and taking his cold, damp hand in mine. “Did you put something in my wine?”

He looked at me as if I were speaking a foreign language.

“What? What are you talking about? In your wine? In your glass? Did you put something in it?”

“Zola, what are you saying?” He tried to straighten up but groaned and clutched his head. “Why would I put something in your wine?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to figure out.”

Fear appeared in his eyes. Not the physical fear of pain or discomfort, but another fear, the fear of realization.

“You think… you think I tried to poison you?” he whispered. “Zola, how can you? I love you. I would never—”

He didn’t finish the sentence because he suddenly vomited onto the floor. I jumped back, but immediately returned to his side, holding him while his body convulsed.

When the spasm ended, he leaned back, exhausted, against the chair’s backrest. His face was wet with sweat and tears.

“I’m sorry,” he rasped.

“No, don’t be silly. The ambulance will be here soon. Everything will be fine.”

But would it be fine?

I looked at my husband—this man I had lived with for nearly two decades—and suddenly realized I didn’t know him. Not at all. Because if he really had tried to poison me, if he really had put something in my wine, then who was he? A monster, a killer, or the victim of someone else’s plan?

The ambulance arrived in fifteen minutes that felt like an eternity. I opened the door to two paramedics, a middle-aged man with a tired face and a young woman with short dark hair.

“Where is the patient?” the man asked, and I led them to the dining room.

Keon was sitting where I had left him, hunched over, his head in his hands. His shirt was soaked with sweat. On the floor were the remains of the vomit that I hadn’t had time to clean.

The paramedics quickly examined him, checking his blood pressure, pulse, and temperature. They asked him questions that Keon answered with difficulty. He spoke confusedly, like someone who was drunk.

“What has he eaten and drunk today?” the woman asked me.

“Fish, salad, cornbread, and wine. Red wine.”

“The alcohol could have intensified the reaction,” the paramedic said, preparing the stretcher. “We need to take him to the hospital. It looks like poisoning, but we won’t know from what until we get the lab results.”

They placed Keon on the stretcher and covered him with a blanket. I grabbed my purse, phone, and keys. At the threshold, I turned and looked at the set table, the two wine glasses, the remains of our celebratory dinner that had turned into a nightmare.

And then it occurred to me: the glasses.

I had to save the glasses. If there really was something in one of them, it would prove that I hadn’t gone crazy. It would explain what had happened.

“Wait,” I told the paramedics. “One minute.”

I went back to the table, picked up both glasses, and carefully placed them in the kitchen sink, trying not to spill the contents. Then I found two large zip-top bags, the kind I used for storing food. I poured the leftover wine from each glass into a separate bag and labeled them: Mine and Keon’s.

I sealed them and put them in the refrigerator.

Maybe I was paranoid. Maybe all this was meaningless. But something inside me told me it was important. That those samples could be the key to unraveling what had happened that night.

At the hospital, everything blurred into an endless nightmare: the bright light of the emergency room, people in white coats, questions, forms, blood work. They took Keon to some inner area of the hospital and I was left in the hallway, sitting on a hard plastic chair, clutching my phone and feeling reality slip through my hands.

It was my birthday, a day that should have been special, joyful, filled with love. Instead, I was sitting in a hospital, not knowing if my husband would survive and not knowing if he had tried to kill me.

That thought pierced me again and again like a sharp knife. Keon, my Keon, the man I trusted more than anyone in the world. Could he?

But if it wasn’t him, who was it?

I tried to recall the last few weeks, the last few months. Had there been anything unusual in his behavior, any oddity I had overlooked or failed to notice?

Truthfully, over the last six months, Keon had been different—more distant, more pensive. He often stayed late at work, saying they had a big new project that required more of his time. I believed him. I didn’t doubt him. Why would I doubt him? We had a good, solid marriage. We trusted each other.

Or did only I believe we trusted each other?

I remembered his phone. Lately, he had become more protective of it. He always carried it with him, even when showering. Before, he could leave it anywhere, and it didn’t matter. But now, the phone was always on him. He had set a new password that he hadn’t told me. Before, we knew each other’s passwords. It was natural for a couple.

But now…

I shook my head, trying to ward off those thoughts. Maybe I was just overthinking. Maybe none of what I was thinking was real.

An hour later, a doctor came out into the hallway. He was a young man in a white coat with a tired but attentive look.

“Family of Keon Bell?”

I jumped up.

“I’m his wife. How is he?”

The doctor looked at me, and there was something in his gaze that made my heart stop.

“Your husband is stable. We performed a stomach pump, put him on an IV drip, and took blood and urine samples. Preliminary results show the presence of barbiturates in his system in a significant concentration.”

“Barbiturates?” I repeated, feeling the ground disappear beneath my feet. “But what are those?”

“They are sedatives, sleeping pills. In high doses, they can be fatal. They cause respiratory depression, loss of consciousness, coma. Your husband was lucky we acted quickly and that the dose was apparently not lethal. Although without the stomach pump and supportive therapy, things could have ended very badly.”

I stood there, unable to move, unable even to breathe normally. Barbiturates. Sleeping pills in Keon’s body. What was in my glass? What should have affected me, but instead affected him when we switched?

“How could they have gotten into his system?” the doctor asked, staring at me. “Does your husband take any kind of sleeping medication? Could he have accidentally taken too high a dose?”

I shook my head.

“No, he doesn’t take anything like that. In fact, he has no trouble sleeping.”

“Then how did they get into his body?”

I looked at the doctor and my lips trembled as I uttered words I didn’t even want to believe myself.

“I think someone put them in his wine. Or rather in my wine, but we switched glasses.”

The doctor frowned.

“You suspect intentional poisoning?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what to think.”

“In that case, we’ll have to contact the police,” the doctor said. “If your suspicions are true, this is a criminal matter.”

Police investigation. Interrogations. Everything seemed unreal, as if it weren’t happening to me but to someone else in a movie or a book.

“Can I see my husband?” I asked.

“Yes, but only for a moment. He needs to rest.”

The doctor accompanied me to an intensive care unit where Keon lay. He was connected to several IV drips. He was wearing an oxygen mask. His skin was still pale, but his breathing seemed regular.

I approached the bed and took his hand. It was warm, alive. The tears I had held back all this time finally flowed.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m sorry I thought that about you. I’m sorry.”

But even as I said it, I wasn’t sure I was wrong, because the questions remained unanswered.

Who had put barbiturates in my wine? When and why?

Keon half opened his eyes and looked at me through the mask. His gaze was confused, but I read something akin to relief in it.

“Zola,” he croaked. “What… what happened?”

“You were poisoned, Keon. They found sleeping pills in your body. A lot of sleeping pills.”

He blinked, trying to process my words.

“But how? I didn’t take any sleeping pills.”

“I know. Someone put it in the wine. In my wine, but we switched glasses, remember? And you drank from my glass.”

The realization slowly dawned in his clouded mind. I saw his eyes widen, saw the horror appear in them.

“Someone tried to poison you,” he whispered. “Who? Why?”

“I don’t know, Keon. I don’t have the slightest idea.”

But even as I spoke those words, I thought about who had access to the glasses, who could have put something in them, and the only answer that came to mind was the one I refused to accept: Keon.

Only he had been home before me. Only he had prepared dinner, set the table, served the wine.

But then that meant he had tried to poison me and had accidentally drunk the poison himself.

It would be logical if it weren’t for one detail.

Why would he do it? Why would my husband, with whom I had lived for 18 years, suddenly want to kill me?

A nurse came into the room, checked the monitors, made a note in the chart, and then looked at me.

“You should go home and rest. Your husband will be under observation all night. You can visit him tomorrow during regular hours.”

I didn’t want to leave, but I knew the nurse was right. I couldn’t do anything there. It was better to go home and try to understand what had happened.

I kissed Keon on the forehead, promised to return in the morning, and left the hospital.

Outside, it was already dark—night cold and black. I hailed a taxi and went home, thinking the entire time about the same thing.

Who did it and why?

At home, the first thing I did was go to the kitchen, take the two bags with the wine samples out of the refrigerator, look at them, and put them back. I would take them for analysis tomorrow. That would provide answers to at least some questions.

Then I went back to the dining room. The table was still set. The food was cooling on the plates. The candles had long since burned out.

I started cleaning up, automatically stacking the dirty dishes, throwing away the leftovers. When I picked up the wine bottle, I noticed something strange about the label. A small smudge of glue, as if it had been peeled off and reglued.

I brought the bottle closer to the light. Yes, the label was definitely damaged at the edge—very subtly, almost imperceptibly, but visible if you looked closely.

Someone had opened this bottle before Keon brought it home. Or Keon himself had opened it.

I placed the bottle on the table, feeling something cold and heavy growing inside me. If the label was damaged, it meant someone had opened the bottle before. They had added something, then resealed it and reglued the label.

But who and where? At the liquor store, at home, somewhere along the way?

I pulled out my phone and searched for the number of the liquor store where we always bought that wine. I called. To my surprise, despite the hour, someone was still there.

“Good evening, Dionysus Wines. How may I help you?” a man’s voice replied.

“Hello. My husband bought a bottle of California Cabernet Reserve today. It’s our favorite wine. We buy it often.”

“Yes, I remember. A tall man asked for that specific brand. Is there a problem?”

“Could you tell me if the bottle was sealed when you sold it? The label wasn’t damaged?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

“Of course it was sealed. We don’t sell open bottles. What happened?”

“I just noticed the label is slightly damaged. I thought it might be a manufacturing defect.”

“That’s impossible. All our wines come from official distributors in perfect condition. If a bottle were damaged, we wouldn’t put it up for sale.”

“I understand. Thank you.”

I hung up.

So, the bottle was in perfect condition when Keon bought it. Therefore, it was opened after the purchase. But where and when?

I tried to remember. Keon got home before me. When I returned, he was already cooking. How much time did he have? Two, maybe three hours. Enough time to open a bottle, add something, and reseal it.

But why?

It made no sense. If he had wanted to poison me, why put on this whole show with the celebratory dinner, the gifts, the love? He could have done it any other day, more discreetly.

Unless… unless the whole thing was a performance. Unless that romantic dinner, that loving husband, those 18 years of marriage were nothing more than a carefully planned play.

A chill ran down my spine.

No. It couldn’t be true. I knew Keon. I loved him. He loved me. We had a good marriage.

But did I really know him? Or did I only know the version of Keon he wanted me to see?

I sat on the sofa, my head in my hands. My thoughts were chaotic, contradictory. On one hand, all the evidence pointed to Keon. Only he had access to the wine. Only he could have put something in it. On the other hand, it was absurd. Why would he want to kill me? We had no serious problems in our marriage, no reason for such an extreme measure.

Or did we?

I tried to recall the last few months in more detail. Had anything changed in our lives? Was there any sign that Keon was unhappy with the marriage, that he wanted out?

Insurance.

That word suddenly popped into my mind.

Six months ago, Keon had insisted we take out a substantial life insurance policy on each other. He said it was the sensible thing to do, that we should be protected in case something happened to one of us. I agreed without thinking. It really seemed sensible.

But now, in light of the events, it took on a completely different meaning.

If I died, Keon would receive a significant insurance payout. Very significant. Enough to start a new life.

My God. Had he been planning this all this time? Had he taken out the insurance knowing he was going to kill me?

I got up from the sofa and started pacing the room. It wasn’t crazy. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe the man I loved most in the world was capable of such a thing.

But the facts spoke for themselves. The barbiturates in the wine, the damaged label on the bottle, the insurance, his strange behavior over the last few months. It all fit into a horrific picture—a picture of betrayal, lies, and attempted murder.

I walked over to the window and looked out at the city at night. Lights in the windows, cars on the streets, people living their normal lives. And my life had just fallen apart, shattered, and I didn’t know how to put the pieces back together.

My phone rang. I jumped in surprise. Unknown number. I hesitated to answer, but finally pressed the accept button.

“Zola Bell?” a male voice I didn’t recognize asked.

“Yes, that’s me.”

“My name is Detective Sterling. I’m handling the case of your husband’s poisoning. The hospital has informed us of what happened. I need to ask you some questions. Can you come to the precinct tomorrow morning?”

Detective. Police. Investigation. Everything was becoming too real.

“Yes, of course. What time?”

“Does 10:00 a.m. work for you?”

“Yes, I’ll be there.”

“Good. And one more thing, Mrs. Bell. Don’t destroy any material evidence. The leftover wine, the glasses, the bottle. We’ll need all of that for analysis.”

“I saved samples of the wine from both glasses. They’re in the refrigerator.”

“Excellent. Very prudent of you. Until tomorrow.”

He hung up and I stood there with the phone in my hand, feeling completely lost.

Tomorrow I would have to give a statement to the police, tell them what had happened, and tell them that I suspected my own husband of attempted murder.

But was that the truth, or was I simply going crazy from stress and inventing everything?

I got into bed, but I couldn’t sleep. My eyes were wide open, staring into the darkness. Next to me, the spot where Keon used to sleep was empty, cold, strange.

I thought about our first meeting. It was 18 years ago at a party for mutual friends. Keon was so charming, so interesting. We talked all night, discovering new facets of each other. He told me about his job at an architectural firm, his dream of building a house that was the perfect combination of functionality and beauty. I told him about my job at the insurance company, how I liked analyzing risks, finding optimal solutions.

We were so different yet so alike—both perfectionists, both ambitious, both a little lonely. When he asked me to marry him six months after meeting, I accepted without hesitation. I knew he was the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

And now, 18 years later, I lay in bed thinking: did I truly know him? Or had I lived all this time with a stranger who knew how to fake it perfectly?

Morning arrived too quickly. I got up early despite barely sleeping. I showered, dressed, and drank a coffee. An unfamiliar woman with dark circles under her eyes and a pale face stared back at me from the mirror. I tried to cover the signs of the sleepless night with makeup, but it didn’t help much.

By 9:30, I was at the police precinct. Detective Sterling turned out to be a man in his fifties with penetrating gray eyes and a tired face. He led me to a small office, offered me a seat, and turned on a recorder.

“Tell me everything from the beginning,” he requested. “Don’t omit any detail, no matter how insignificant it seems.”

And I told him everything. The birthday, the celebratory dinner, the wine, the strange smell, how we switched glasses, how Keon suddenly got sick, the barbiturates they found in his blood, the damaged label on the bottle, the insurance we took out six months ago.

The detective listened carefully, asking clarifying questions occasionally. When I finished, he remained silent for a long time, contemplating what he had heard.

“Do you have reason to believe your husband wanted to poison you?” he finally asked.

I sighed.

“I don’t know. Logic tells me yes, but my heart tells me it’s impossible. We’ve been together for 18 years. Good years. We had no serious conflicts, no reason for something… for this horror.”

“Money is usually a reason,” the detective observed. “You mentioned substantial insurance. How much exactly?”

“$500,000 each, meaning if I die, Keon receives $500,000 and vice versa.”

Sterling nodded, writing something in his notebook.

“A considerable sum, enough to motivate some people to commit a crime. But let’s consider other possibilities. Could anyone else have had access to the wine? Someone who wanted to harm you or your husband?”

I thought about it. Who could it be? We had no enemies, no people who wished us ill.

“Or did we?” I murmured.

“Keon has an ex-girlfriend,” I said slowly. “Veronica. They broke up shortly before we met. The breakup was difficult. She took it very badly. She even threatened him. But that was a long time ago. Eighteen years.”

“Name and last name,” Sterling said, sharpening his focus.

“Veronica Dubois. But honestly, I don’t think she has anything to do with it. Too much time has passed.”

“Grudges and jealousy don’t have an expiration date,” the detective said. “We will investigate that lead. Anyone else?”

I tried to think, but nothing came to mind. Our life was so normal, so quiet. Work, home, sporadic meetings with friends. No drama, no conflicts.

“I can’t think of anyone,” I admitted. “We live a quiet life. We don’t have enemies.”

“All right, let’s go back to your husband. Did you notice any change in his behavior lately?”

And I told him everything. How Keon had become more distant over the last six months, the frequent tardiness at work, the new phone password, how he had become more reserved, less open.

Sterling listened, nodding.

“Classic symptoms of someone hiding something. Perhaps an affair, perhaps financial problems, or both. Do you think he has another woman?”

The idea was painful, but at the same time, if it was true, it would explain many things.

“It’s one of the hypotheses,” he continued. “A man wants to start a new life with another woman, but divorce isn’t financially convenient. A half-million-dollar insurance payout solves the problem. A classic scheme.”

I felt my stomach churn. Was everything really so simple and horrible? Was Keon having an affair and decided to get rid of me for money and a new love?

“We will investigate his phone, his computer, his bank movements,” the detective continued. “If he really planned it, we’ll find evidence. People always leave tracks.”

“And what if… what if it wasn’t his idea?” I suddenly said. “What if someone else put the poison? Someone who wanted to harm me, but Keon accidentally got hurt.”

“Then we have to find that person and find out how he or she gained access to your house, to your wine.”

It was a good question. Our condo was on the fourth floor. The door was always locked. We didn’t have a cleaning service. We cleaned and cooked ourselves. Who could have entered unseen?

Unless… unless someone had a key.

“Who has keys to your condo besides you and your husband?” Sterling asked, as if reading my thoughts.

“No one. Well, my friend Briana had a copy in case of an emergency, but she returned them about three years ago when she moved to another city.”

“Are you sure she returned them? She couldn’t have made a copy?”

I shook my head.

“Briana wouldn’t do something like that. She’s been my best friend since college. It’s absurd to even think that she…”

“In a criminal investigation, no one can be ruled out,” Sterling said gently but firmly. “Not even the closest people. Sometimes they are precisely the culprits because they have the access, the opportunity, and the motive.”

His words echoed in my head as I left the precinct an hour later. They told me the investigation would continue, that they would contact me as soon as they had the results of the wine sample analyses and had checked all the leads.

I went to the hospital to visit Keon. He looked better than the day before. His skin had regained its normal color. His eyes were clear. He was sitting in bed, propped up by pillows, flipping through a magazine.

“Zola,” he said, happy to see me. “It’s great you came. I was getting bored here.”

I walked over to the bed, sat in the chair next to him, and looked at him, trying to see something—any sign of deceit, of betrayal. But I only saw the familiar face of my husband, the man I loved.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Much better. The doctors say that if the tests come back okay, they’ll discharge me tomorrow.”

“That’s fantastic.”

We fell silent. A strange awkwardness, which had never existed before, settled between us. I felt the tension growing as a host of unasked questions floated in the air.

“Zola,” Keon finally said, “I have to tell you something.”

My heart pounded. There it was, the confession. He was going to admit he tried to kill me, or that he had another woman, or both.

“What?” My voice sounded firmer than I expected.

He lowered his gaze as if he couldn’t look me in the face.

“These last six months, I’ve lied to you about many things, and I’m so ashamed.”

There it was, the moment of truth.

“What did you lie about, Keon?”

He took a deep breath, steeling himself.

“I lost my job four months ago. I was laid off from the architecture firm. They said the company was downsizing, that they had to let go of the more expensive specialists. They gave me a small severance package and asked me to leave.”

I stared at him, unable to speak. He had lost his job four months ago and hadn’t told me.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I finally managed to articulate.

“Because I was embarrassed. Because I was afraid you would be disappointed in me. Because I thought I would find another job quickly and you wouldn’t even have to find out.”

“But… but you didn’t find another job.”

“No. I tried. I sent resumes, went to interviews, but the job market is very difficult now. Everywhere they want young specialists willing to work for less money, and I’m already 45. For many companies, that’s too much.”

I tried to process that information. Keon unemployed for four months. So all those late hours at work were a lie. He wasn’t working. Where was he going? What was he doing all day?

“And you just… you just came home every evening as if nothing had happened, telling me made-up stories about work?”

He nodded, and I saw tears in his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Zola. I was so tired of pretending, so tired of lying. When all this happened yesterday, when I almost died, I realized I couldn’t keep living like this. I had to tell you the truth.”

“And the money,” I asked. “What have we been living on these months? My salary doesn’t cover all our expenses.”

Keon hesitated, and I understood I was about to hear another confession.

“I took out a loan, a big loan. I told the bank the money was for condo renovations, using the condo as collateral.”

My condo. The one I had bought with my money before we got married, but which we had put in both our names after the wedding.

“How much?” I asked.

“$40,000.”

I closed my eyes, feeling everything inside me clench. $40,000 in debt with our condo as collateral. A condo we could now lose if we didn’t pay.

“And how were you planning to pay it back, Keon, if you don’t have a job?”

“I thought… I hoped I would find a job, that everything would work out.”

“And when you realized you wouldn’t find one, what… what did you decide then?” The words escaped my lips before I could stop them. “Was it easier to kill your wife for the insurance?”

A dense silence fell. Keon looked at me with such horror in his eyes that I almost believed in his innocence.

“You think it was me?” he asked. “You think I tried to kill you?”

“Why not?” I challenged. “You had access to the wine. You have a motive. The debt, the insurance. You’ve been lying to me for months. Why should I believe you now?”

“Because I love you,” he shouted, and several nurses peered into the room to see if everything was all right. Keon gestured to them that everything was fine, and they left. He continued, speaking lower, but no less emotionally.

“Yes, I lied. Yes, I’m a coward who couldn’t confess to his wife that he had lost his job. Yes, I took out a loan you didn’t know about. But killing you? That’s insane. I would die before I hurt you.”

I looked at him, trying to discern if he was telling the truth. His eyes were full of tears. His voice trembled with emotion. He seemed sincere, but I no longer knew if I could trust my feelings, my intuition.

“If it wasn’t you, then who?” I asked, exhausted. “Who put barbiturates in my wine? Who wanted to kill me?”

“I don’t know, but we’ll find out together. I promise you, Zola, we’ll find who did this.”

I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe my husband was innocent, that our marriage was real, that the love between us wasn’t a deception. But too many doubts had taken root in my soul.

“The police are investigating,” I said. “They’re checking all the leads. They’ll investigate you, too, Keon. Your finances, your phone, your computer. If you’re hiding anything, they’ll find it.”

“Let them investigate. I have nothing to hide besides what I’ve already told you.”

But something didn’t add up for me. If Keon was innocent, if he really hadn’t tried to kill me, then who? Who wanted me dead? And why?

I said goodbye to Keon, promising to visit him the next day, and left the hospital. The sun was shining brightly. People were rushing about their errands. Life continued, and I felt as if I were standing on the edge of an abyss, not knowing what awaited me.

At home, I re-examined the wine bottle, looking for more clues. The damaged label clearly indicated the bottle had been opened. But when and where?

I called the liquor store again and asked to speak to the clerk who sold the wine to Keon.

“Good afternoon. Could you recall the exact time my husband bought the wine yesterday?”

“Wait, I’ll check the records,” he said. “Yesterday’s date… here it is. Around 5:00 p.m. He paid by card, so the exact time was recorded.”

Five p.m. I got home at six, so only an hour had passed between the purchase of the wine and my arrival. In that time, Keon had to drive from the liquor store to the condo, about twenty minutes with Atlanta traffic, then start preparing dinner.

When did he have time to open the bottle, add the poison, and reseal it? Unless he had done it beforehand, unless he had bought an identical bottle earlier, prepared it, and simply brought it home yesterday.

But then, where was the bottle he bought yesterday? And why was the damaged label precisely on this bottle, the one we had at home?

The questions multiplied, and answers were scarce.

I sat down at the computer, opened our bank account, and looked at our finances. Keon had told the truth about the loan. There really was a substantial amount requested four months ago, and a considerable sum was deducted from our account each month to pay it.

I looked at the other transactions. Normal purchases: supermarket, gas, utilities. Nothing unusual, no major spending, no suspicious transfers.

Then I opened Keon’s credit card statements. And here there was something interesting. Regular payments at the same coffee shop almost daily for the last four months.

That coffee shop was on the other side of the city, far from our condo and his old workplace. What was he doing there every day? Who was he seeing?

I looked up the coffee shop’s address online. The Daily Grind, a cozy spot downtown. The photos showed it was a fairly expensive establishment with stylish décor and above-average prices.

I had to go there and talk to the staff. Maybe they knew something. Maybe they had seen Keon with someone.

But first, I called Briana, my old friend, who had known Keon almost as long as I had.

“Zola, how are you? It’s been too long,” her voice was so warm, so familiar. And suddenly, I felt my eyes well up with tears.

“Briana, I’m in trouble. Very big trouble.”

And I told her everything. The birthday, the wine, the poisoning, the suspicions, what Keon had hidden from me over the last few months.

Briana listened in silence, only exclaiming occasionally, “My God, Zola, that’s horrific. And do you really think Keon could have done it?”

“I don’t know what to think. On one hand, all the evidence points to him. On the other, it’s Keon, my husband, the man I’ve known for 18 years.”

“People change,” Briana said softly. “Especially when they are in difficult situations. Unemployment, debt—it’s enormous stress. It can lead to despair.”

“But to murder?”

“I don’t know, Zola. I really don’t know.”

We talked a little longer. Briana offered to come over to support me, but I refused. I needed time to process everything alone.

After talking to her, I decided to take action. Staying home, waiting for the results of the police investigation was unbearable. I had to do something, find answers for myself.

I went to that coffee shop Keon had frequented so much in recent months. The Daily Grind turned out to be a genuinely cozy place with plush sofas, dim lighting, and pleasant music. Behind the counter was a girl about twenty-five, a friendly blonde with a kind smile.

“Good afternoon. What can I get for you?” she asked.

“A cappuccino, please. And I wanted to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind.”

The girl nodded, starting to prepare the coffee.

“Sure, tell me.”

I pulled out my phone and showed her a picture of Keon.

“Do you recognize this man? Does he come here often?”

The girl looked at the photo and her face instantly lit up.

“Oh, yes, of course. Keon is a regular customer. He comes almost every day for several months now. A very nice man. Always polite. Leaves good tips. And you? If it’s not indiscreet…”

“I’m his wife.”

“Oh.”

The girl looked surprised.

“I didn’t know he was married. He never mentioned it.”

Interesting. Keon came here every day, but never mentioned he was married.

“And does he always come alone or with someone?”

The girl hesitated for an instant, and I knew I was about to hear something important.

“Well, almost always with a woman. They always sit at that table by the window.” She pointed to a cozy corner overlooking the street. “They talk for a long time. Sometimes they laugh. I’ve always thought they were a couple.”

My heart sank. A woman. Keon regularly met a woman here and they seemed like a couple.

“Could you describe this woman?”

“She’s about your age, maybe a little younger. Dark bobbed hair, always very well-dressed, business style. A beautiful woman.”

“Do you know her name?”

“No, I’m sorry. But if you’d like, I can show you the security camera footage. We have a camera that records the seating area. Maybe you can see her better that way.”

I nodded and the girl led me to a small storage room where a monitor displayed the recordings. She rewound to the day before around 2 p.m.

And there they were: Keon and a woman sitting at the table by the window. They really looked like a couple—heads close, hands near each other on the table, smiles, laughter.

I looked at the screen, feeling the cold spread inside me. There was the answer. The reason Keon lied to me, the reason he had become so reserved: he was having an affair.

He was cheating on me with that woman.

“Can you take a screenshot of this moment?” I asked the girl.

“Sure.”

She took several screenshots and sent them to my phone. I thanked her, paid for the coffee I hadn’t even touched, and walked out onto the street. My head was spinning.

Keon was cheating on me. Maybe that’s why he hid losing his job, so I wouldn’t know he was spending his days with another woman instead of at the office.

But who was she? What was her name? And did she know Keon was married?

I had to find her, talk to her, find out what was between them, and perhaps learn if she knew anything about the poisoning.

I went back home, sat down at the computer, and looked at the image the girl from the coffee shop had sent me. I examined the woman’s face, trying to recall if I had seen her before.

And suddenly, it hit me. I knew that face. I had seen it before.

I started going through the photos on my phone, Keon’s social media accounts, and I found her.

A company dinner from the architectural firm where Keon worked, from about a year and a half ago. In one of the photos, in the background, was that woman. The caption read, “The team of best architects.”

She worked with Keon—or used to work with him if she was also laid off during the cuts.

I checked Keon’s social media friends list, trying to find her, and there she was: “Seraphina Dubois, 39, architect.” Her profile was semi-private, but I could see some photos. In one of the most recent, she was posing, smiling in front of a building. Beautiful, successful, self-assured. My rival, if you could call her that, the woman for whom my husband had possibly tried to kill me.

I wrote her a private message.

“Hello, Seraphina. My name is Zola Bell. I’m Keon’s wife. I need to talk to you. It’s very important.”

The response came surprisingly fast.

“Hello, Zola. I know who you are. Keon has told me about you. Yes, I think we need to talk. When and where?”

She knew about me. Keon had told her about his wife. I wondered what exactly he had told her. That I was a bad wife, that he was unhappy in his marriage, that he wanted to leave me.

We agreed to meet at Piedmont Park near my home in an hour—neutral territory, a public place. I didn’t know what to expect from this meeting, but I needed answers.

There weren’t many people in the park. The autumn wind was tearing the last leaves from the trees. The sky was overcast. I sat on a bench, bundled in my coat, and waited.

Seraphina arrived punctually. She was as beautiful as in the photos, perhaps even more attractive in person. Confident stride, straight back, a gaze that met mine without shyness.

“Zola?” she asked, approaching the bench.

“Yes. Please sit down.”

She sat beside me, leaving a safe distance between us. We remained silent for a few moments, assessing each other.

“I know why you wanted to see me,” Seraphina finally said. “You want to know about my relationship with Keon.”

“Yes.”

“We’ve been dating for six months, since we were both laid off from the firm. We found ourselves in the same situation—out of work, feeling useless, lost. We started seeing each other just to support each other. And then… then it became something more.”

Her sincerity was almost insulting. She spoke about it with astonishing calm, as if she were saying she had gone to the movies, not that she was having an affair with a married man.

“Did you know he was married?” I asked.

“Yes, he told me from the start. But he also told me that there was no more love in your marriage, that you were only living together out of habit, that he wanted to leave you but didn’t know how to do it.”

“Out of habit,” I repeated those words again and again in my head. So that’s how Keon described our marriage—as a habit he wanted to get rid of.

“And you plan to be together?” I asked.

Seraphina nodded.

“Yes. Keon promised me he would divorce you, that we would start a new life together.”

“And the insurance? $500,000. Did he tell you about that?”

Seraphina frowned.

“What insurance?”

“Six months ago, we took out a life insurance policy on each other. If one of us dies, the other receives half a million dollars. Convenient, right? Especially if you want to start a new life, but don’t want to divide assets in a divorce.”

Seraphina’s face paled.

“What do you mean? You think Keon…?”

“Yesterday was my birthday,” I said. “Keon bought a bottle of our favorite wine, but there was poison in my glass. Barbiturates. If I had drunk it, I would most likely have died, or at best fallen into a coma. But we switched glasses and he drank the poison.”

Seraphina stared at me with wide eyes.

“That’s impossible. Keon wouldn’t. He’s not capable of murder.”

“Are you sure? Do you know him that well?”

She fell silent, and I saw doubt and the desire to believe battling in her eyes.

“Where were you last night?” I suddenly asked.

“At home, alone. Why are you asking?”

“I’m just checking all the leads. Maybe it wasn’t Keon who put the poison. Maybe it was you, a woman who wants to get rid of her lover’s wife.”

Seraphina jumped up from the bench.

“That’s an insult. I would never do something like that. Yes, I’m having an affair with your husband. And yes, I’m not proud of it. But murder is crazy.”

“Then who?” I also stood up, looking her in the eyes. “Who wanted to kill me? If it wasn’t you or Keon, then who?”

“I don’t know, but I know for a fact that it wasn’t Keon. He loves you, you know. Despite everything, he told me he felt guilty about falling in love with someone else. But he couldn’t stop loving you, too.”

Her words were a knife in my heart. Keon loved us both. How was that possible? How could one love two women at the same time?

“He’s in the hospital,” I said, exhausted. “They’ll discharge him tomorrow. If you want to visit him, you can. Maybe he’ll tell you more than he tells me.”

I turned and walked away, leaving Seraphina standing in the middle of the park. I needed to get out of there, away from that woman, her words, the reality of my broken marriage.

At home, I lay down on the sofa and closed my eyes, trying to piece together the puzzle. Keon had lost his job, taken out a loan, and started an affair. He had lied to me for months. But had he tried to kill me? Or had it been someone else?

Someone with their own reasons for wanting my death?

My phone rang, pulling me from my thoughts. It was Detective Sterling.

“Mrs. Bell, we have the results of the analysis of the wine samples you provided,” he said.

“And?” I asked, my throat suddenly dry.

“In the sample you labeled ‘Mine,’ a high concentration of phenobarbital was detected. It’s a barbiturate used in medicine as a sedative and anticonvulsant. At the dose in your glass, it could have caused a deep coma or death, especially combined with alcohol. And in Keon’s glass—pure wine, no foreign substances.”

So, I hadn’t been wrong. The poison was only in my glass. Someone had genuinely tried to kill me.

“We’ve also examined your husband’s financial documents,” Sterling continued. “The information about the job loss and the considerable loan is confirmed. We also discovered he was regularly meeting with a woman named Seraphina Dubois. Do you know her?”

“Yes. I met with her today. She admitted they’re having an affair.”

“That gives your husband a very strong motive. Debt, a mistress, insurance. The classic scheme of spousal murder for financial gain. But he drank the poisoned wine himself. Why would he do that if he was the one who put the poison in?”

“Perhaps he didn’t expect you to suggest switching glasses,” the detective said. “Perhaps he was thrown off and couldn’t refuse without giving himself away. Or perhaps it was a twisted plan to feign his own innocence by drinking the poison, but in a lesser dose so he could survive.”

That version seemed too complicated, too risky. Was Keon capable of something like that?

“We are still investigating,” Sterling said. “But I must tell you that for now, your husband is the main suspect. We have enough evidence to open a criminal case against him for attempted murder.”

Attempted murder. My husband, the man I had lived with for 18 years, the father of my unborn children, my partner, my friend. Or had I lived all this time with a stranger I didn’t know at all?

After speaking with the detective, I couldn’t settle down. I walked around the condo trying to decide what to do next. Believe Keon, or trust the facts that all pointed to his guilt?

I remembered our first meeting, our wedding. Were all the years we spent together real feelings? Or was he playing the role of a loving husband all this time, waiting for the right moment to get rid of me?

No. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it.

But then who? If it wasn’t Keon who put the poison in my wine?

Suddenly, I remembered Keon’s ex-girlfriend, Veronica Dubois, whom I had mentioned to the detective. Eighteen years ago, she had suffered a lot from the breakup with Keon, even threatening him. What if she had been plotting a revenge plan all this time? What if she had found out about our home, our life, and decided to take revenge by taking Keon’s wife away from him?

It seemed unlikely, but in this situation, every lead deserved to be investigated.

I found Veronica on social media. Her profile was public, full of photos. Veronica had changed over the years. She had aged, of course, but was still an attractive woman. Married, two children. She lived in Atlanta, working as a therapist.

Therapist. That meant she had access to various medications, including sleeping pills.

I wrote her a message introducing myself as Keon’s wife and asking for a meeting. To my surprise, she immediately accepted. We agreed to meet the next day at a coffee shop.

Veronica turned out to be a calm, composed woman, nothing like the resentful ex-girlfriend capable of revenge. She ordered tea. I ordered a coffee that I didn’t plan to drink. We sat across from each other, and I studied her face, looking for signs of hatred, of a desire for revenge, but I only saw curiosity and slight caution.

“Well,” Veronica began, stirring the sugar in her tea. “You wanted to talk to me about Keon after so many years. I confess I’m surprised.”

“Do you remember him?” I asked, although the question was stupid. Of course, she remembered.

Veronica smiled, and there was something sad in her smile.

“Of course I remember. Keon was my first real love. When I was 21, he seemed like the perfect man—smart, talented, handsome. I thought we would be together forever, but we broke up.”

“Yes,” I said quietly.

“He said he wasn’t ready for a serious relationship, that he needed to focus on his career. I took it very badly. I won’t lie to you. I even threatened him in a moment of passion. I said stupid things about him, things I regretted. But that was just the pain talking, you know? The emotions of a young girl whose heart has been broken.”

I nodded, understanding that feeling. A broken heart can make you say and do things you later regret.

“And then you found out he married me,” I said.

“Yes. Two years after our breakup. Honestly, it hurt to find out, especially considering he said he wasn’t ready for a serious relationship. Apparently, he just wasn’t ready for a serious relationship with me.”

There was no resentment in her voice, only understanding and acceptance.

“But I moved on,” she continued. “I met my husband, got married, had kids, built a life that makes me happy. Keon is in the past. A pleasant memory, nothing more.”

“Even if that memory hurt you,” I said.

Veronica looked at me steadily.

“Zola, I’m a therapist. I work with people who have suffered trauma, loss, betrayal. I know that holding on to resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for your enemy to die. It only destroys you. I forgave Keon a long time ago—not for him, but for me.”

Her words sounded sincere, and I began to doubt my theory. Could this calm, composed woman try to poison me for revenge from a breakup so long ago?

“Veronica,” I said slowly, “with your professional background, I assume you have access to various medications.”

She frowned.

“What are you getting at? I’m a therapist, not a psychiatrist. I don’t prescribe medication. That requires a medical degree.”

“But you could get barbiturates if you wanted.”

Veronica’s face hardened.

“Barbiturates? What are you talking about, Zola? What happened?”

And I told her about the birthday, the wine, the poisoning, that the police were looking for who had tried to kill me.

When I finished, Veronica was pale and shocked.

“My God. And you thought of me because I was with Keon 18 years ago?”

“I’m checking all the leads. The detective mentioned you threatened Keon after the breakup.”

Veronica shook her head as if she couldn’t believe what was happening.

“Zola, I understand you’re desperate, that you’re looking for answers, but I have nothing to do with this. Yes, I threatened Keon 18 years ago. Stupid words from a hurt girl. But I would never hurt him or you. Never. I have my own life, my own family, my own happiness. Why would I destroy all that to avenge an old grudge?”

She was right. It didn’t make sense.

“I’m sorry,” I said, exhausted. “I just don’t know who else might be interested. Who would want me dead?”

Veronica reached her hand across the table and touched mine.

“I understand what you’re going through. The feeling of betrayal, of distrust toward your closest loved ones is hard. But I can give you a piece of advice as a therapist. Don’t look for a complicated explanation where there may be a simple answer. Often the culprit is precisely the one all the evidence points to. Your husband had the motive, the opportunity, and the means. Perhaps you should accept that bitter truth.”

I nodded, grateful for her understanding, though everything inside me rebelled against it. I didn’t want to accept that Keon could have done it. I didn’t want to admit that 18 years of my marriage had been a lie.

After meeting with Veronica, I went home distraught. Every lead investigated led nowhere. Every new conversation only confirmed what I refused to admit: most likely, Keon had tried to kill me.

That night, Briana called me.

“Zola, how are you? I’ve been thinking about you all day. Do you want me to come keep you company?”

I wanted to refuse, to say I could manage alone, but the truth was I couldn’t. I needed support, a shoulder to lean on.

“Yes,” I admitted. “Please come over. It’s really hard to be alone.”

Briana arrived an hour later with a grocery bag and a bottle of red wine. Seeing my face, seeing the wine, she smiled sheepishly.

“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. It was habit.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I just won’t drink it.”

We sat in the kitchen. Briana prepared a light dinner—salad and an omelet. I ate automatically, barely tasting anything. Briana told me about her life in the other city, her job, new people she had met. I half listened, nodding at the right moments.

“Zola,” she finally said, “you’re not really here with me. What happened today? Any news?”

And I told her about the analysis results, my meeting with Seraphina, the conversation with Veronica, that all roads led to a single conclusion: Keon was guilty.

Briana listened in silence, her face becoming increasingly serious.

“I’m so sorry, Zola,” she said when I finished. “That’s awful. Betrayal always hurts, but when it comes from the person closest to you, it’s simply unbearable.”

“I still can’t believe it,” I confessed. “Part of me is still hoping it’s a mistake, that there’s another explanation. But all the facts point to him. I know it with my head, but my heart… my heart refuses to accept it.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” Briana said gently. “When people want to hide something, they know how to do it. Especially those who know you well and know what you pay attention to and what you don’t.”

Her words made sense, but I still felt stupid. How could I have been so blind, so naive?

We talked until late into the night. Briana stayed in the guest room. She didn’t want to leave me alone. I was grateful for her presence—not having to lie in that empty condo completely alone, going over all those horrible thoughts.

In the morning when I woke up, Briana was already in the kitchen making breakfast. The smell of fresh coffee and toast filled the condo, creating an illusion of normalcy.

“Good morning,” she greeted, smiling. “How did you sleep?”

“Badly,” I admitted. “I had nightmares all night about Keon, about the wine, about me dying while he just watched.”

Briana nodded compassionately.

“That’s normal. Your mind is trying to process the trauma. Zola, you should think about getting therapy, talking to a specialist. It will help you get through all this.”

I nodded, though the idea of therapy seemed distant and unnecessary. How can a therapist help you when your husband has tried to kill you? What words can heal a wound like that?

After breakfast, Briana got ready to leave. She had to return home to work. We hugged goodbye and she promised to call me every day to check on me.

Left alone, I sat down at the computer. I needed to distract myself, occupy my mind, which constantly returned to the same thoughts. I opened my work email and started responding to the emails that had accumulated.

That’s when I saw a strange email. It had arrived two days ago from an unknown address with no subject line. Normally, I would delete such emails without opening them, considering them spam. But something urged me to click on it.

Inside, there was only a short text:

If you want to know the truth about what happened, come to Piedmont Park tomorrow at 3 p.m., the bench next to the fountain. Come alone.

My heart started beating faster. Who had written that? And what truth did they want to tell me?

I looked at the email date. It had arrived the day before my birthday—before the poisoning. Someone knew what was going to happen. Someone had tried to warn me.

Or was it a trap?

I reread the email several times, trying to guess who could have sent it. The email address told me nothing. Just a random set of letters and numbers. An anonymous account created specifically for that message.

What should I do? Go to that meeting or ignore the email, considering it a cruel joke by someone?

But what if it was genuinely important? What if someone knew something that could help uncover the truth?

I called Detective Sterling and told him about the email.

“Did you save it?” he asked.

“Yes, of course.”

“Forward it to me. We’ll try to trace the sender’s IP address, but they likely used a VPN or a proxy, and we won’t be able to identify them.”

I forwarded the email and waited for him to receive it.

“And what about the meeting?” I asked. “Should I go?”

Sterling was silent, thoughtful.

“It could be dangerous. We don’t know who sent that email or what their intentions are. On the other hand, it could be an opportunity to get important information. If you decide to go, I’ll arrange surveillance. Several plainclothes officers will be nearby to intervene if there’s danger.”

“Agreed,” I accepted. “I’ll go. I need to know the truth. Whoever offers it.”

The time remaining until the meeting felt endless. I tried to occupy myself with my things—working, cleaning, cooking—but I couldn’t stop thinking about that meeting, about who I would see, what they would tell me.

At 2 p.m., I started getting ready. I put on simple clothes: jeans, a sweater, a jacket. Nothing flashy, nothing that would draw attention. I grabbed my purse with my phone, wallet, and keys.

Before leaving, I called the hospital. The nurse told me Keon had been discharged that morning, that he was already home in our condo. But I didn’t want to go back there while he was there, not after everything I had discovered.

I arrived at Piedmont Park twenty minutes before the time. I looked around, trying to locate the police officers Sterling had spoken of. I saw a man with a newspaper on a nearby bench, a woman with a stroller walking not far away. They could be police or they could be simple visitors.

I walked over to the fountain, sat on the indicated bench, and pulled out my phone, pretending to look at a message, although I was really just trying to calm myself.

3:00. 3:05. 3:10. 3:15.

No one approached.

I began to think it was a cruel joke, that no one would come, that I had wasted my time and nerves for nothing.

And then a woman approached the bench. Young, about twenty-five, with dark sunglasses and a scarf on her head. She sat down next to me without looking at me.

“Zola?” she asked in a low voice.

“Yes. Are you the one who wrote to me?”

“Yes. Thank you for coming.”

“Who are you, and what do you want to tell me?”

The woman was silent, as if searching for the right words.

“My name is Kalista. I worked at the architectural firm with your husband and Seraphina Dubois. I know something you don’t know. Something that could change everything.”

My heart sped up.

“Speak,” I said.

Kalista looked around, making sure no one could hear us.

“Seraphina and Keon… their relationship is not what it seems. It’s not just a romance between two lonely people who found mutual comfort after losing their jobs.”

“Then what is it?” I asked.

“Seraphina planned everything.”

“What?”

“She found out that you and Keon had taken out substantial life insurance policies. I don’t know how. Maybe she overheard a conversation. Maybe she saw the documents. And she decided to take advantage of it. She seduced Keon, made him fall in love with her, and then started planting the idea that the only way to be together was to get rid of you.”

I listened, unable to believe what I was hearing.

“You mean Seraphina manipulated Keon? Forced him to try to kill me?”

“Not exactly. Keon didn’t try to kill you. Seraphina did.”

The world around me stopped.

“What?”

“The day of your birthday, Seraphina went to your condo. She knew Keon would be preparing the celebratory dinner. She knew about your traditional wine. She went under the pretense of needing to pick up some documents Keon had forgotten at her place. He opened the door for her. They talked for a couple of minutes on the threshold and then he returned to the kitchen. Seraphina stayed at the entrance supposedly to put on her shoes, but instead she went to the dining room, where Keon had already poured the wine into the glasses, and added the barbiturates to your glass.”

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. Seraphina, my husband’s mistress, had tried to kill me.

“How do you know that?” I asked. “Were you there?”

“No, but Seraphina told me. We were good friends, colleagues. She confided in me, and the day before she confessed what she was going to do. I tried to stop her, to convince her it was crazy, but she wouldn’t listen. She was obsessed with the idea of being with Keon, getting that money, starting a new life.”

“And you didn’t do anything?” I asked, anger rising in my chest. “You didn’t warn me? You didn’t inform the police?”

Kalista lowered her head.

“I didn’t think she would actually do it. I thought it was just a fantasy, emotions that would pass. But when I found out what had happened, that your husband had been hospitalized for poisoning, I understood she had really done it. And I was afraid. Afraid that if I told, Seraphina would know it was me, and that I could then be the next victim. But… you wrote to me.”

“Yes. Because I can’t live with this. I can’t know that an innocent man might suffer because of my silence. Your husband didn’t try to kill you, Zola. Yes, he lied. Yes, he cheated on you. But the killer is Seraphina.”

I sat on the bench trying to assimilate all that information. Seraphina, the calm and beautiful Seraphina who had sat next to me in the park and told me Keon loved me despite everything. She had lied, manipulated, tried to kill me.

“Do you have evidence? Anything to corroborate your words?” I asked.

Kalista shook her head.

“No, just my testimony. Seraphina told me verbally. No recordings, no messages. She’s too smart for that.”

“Then it’s just your word against hers.”

“I know. That’s why I was afraid to go to the police. Without evidence, they can’t do anything. But I thought you should know. You have the right to know the truth.”

I looked at that young woman who was risking herself by meeting me, by telling me everything.

“Thank you,” I said sincerely. “For having the courage to tell me.”

“What are you going to do?” Kalista asked.

“I don’t know, but I’ll find a way to prove Seraphina is guilty. I won’t let her get away with this.”

Kalista nodded and stood up from the bench.

“Be careful. Seraphina is smart and ruthless. She won’t stop at anything to get what she wants.”

She walked away, disappearing into the park crowd, and I stayed seated, contemplating what I had heard.

The man with the newspaper approached me. He was one of the police officers.

“Mrs. Bell, we recorded everything,” he said quietly. “The conversation has been audio taped. It could serve as evidence.”

“But she said she has no proof against Seraphina, only her words, her testimony.”

“That is already evidence. We can question Seraphina, check her alibi for the time of the crime, investigate her bank movements for the purchase of barbiturates. If she’s guilty, we’ll find the clues.”

I nodded, feeling hope awaken inside me. Maybe Keon was truly innocent. Maybe our marriage could be saved. Maybe not everything was lost.

That afternoon, I met with Keon. He had returned home after being discharged from the hospital, and we had agreed to talk seriously about everything that had happened.

He looked tired, aged—dark circles under his eyes, day-old stubble, slumped shoulders. Nothing like the confident, successful architect I had married 18 years ago.

We sat in the dining room where only a few days earlier we had celebrated my birthday. The table was clean. No trace of that terrible evening.

“Zola,” Keon began, “I know I’ve caused you a lot of pain with my lies, with my betrayal, and I’m not asking for forgiveness because I know I don’t deserve it. But I want you to know: I never tried to kill you. Never. The very idea is absurd and unbearable to me.”

“I know,” I said.

And I told him about my meeting with Kalista, what I had discovered about Seraphina.

As I spoke, Keon’s face changed. First disbelief, then shock, then anger.

“Seraphina,” he said. “She did it. She tried to kill you.”

“Yes. And she possibly manipulated you into being her accomplice without you even knowing it.”

Keon covered his face with his hands.

“My God, what an idiot. What a blind, gullible idiot.”

“It’s not your fault you were manipulated,” I said, although a part of me was still angry with him—for the lies, for the infidelity, for everything. “But you are to blame for cheating on me, for lying to me about everything else.”

“I know, and I’ll understand if you can’t forgive me, if you want a divorce.”

“Divorce?” That word hung between us. A week ago, the idea of divorce seemed unthinkable. But now…

“I don’t know what I want, Keon,” I admitted. “I need time. Time to think about everything, to understand my feelings, to get over this trauma.”

“I understand. I’ll wait as long as it takes.”

We fell silent, each lost in thought.

Then Keon said, “I’ll leave. I’ll rent a place or stay with a friend. You need space, and I don’t want to cause you more discomfort with my presence.”

I wanted to protest, to say it was his home, too. But the truth was, I really needed to be alone—without him, without the constant reminder of what had happened.

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

The next day, Detective Sterling called me to the precinct.

“We have news,” he said when I entered his office. “We interrogated Seraphina Dubois. At first, she denied everything, but when we told her we had a witness, she started to falter. And then we found a piece of evidence.”

“What?” I asked.

“Seraphina bought phenobarbital online from an illegal supplier. We found the correspondence in her email that she thought she had deleted, but nothing is truly erased on the internet if you know where to look.”

My heart pounded harder.

“So, it was really her?”

“Yes. She has confessed everything. She told us how she planned it, how she found out about the insurance policies, how she manipulated your husband. She said the idea came to her when she realized Keon would never divorce you willingly, that he was too attached to you despite his romance with her. She decided the only way to be with him was to get rid of you and get the insurance money in the process.”

I listened, feeling a mixture of relief and horror. Relief because Keon was innocent, because our marriage wasn’t based on his desire to kill me. And horror at the thought that someone could plot my murder with such cold blood.

“What will happen to her?” I asked.

“She has been arrested. She is charged with attempted murder, considering the premeditation and the coldness of the execution. She’ll face a considerable sentence—ten to fifteen years, maybe more.”

I nodded. Justice had been served. The culprit had been punished. But why didn’t I feel any satisfaction? Why was there only emptiness inside?

“Your husband has been completely cleared of suspicion,” Sterling continued. “Although, of course, his actions—the lies about work, the affair—are his business, but they have nothing to do with the crime.”

“Thank you,” I said. “For everything. For finding the truth.”

Leaving the precinct, I felt strange, as if a chapter of my life had ended. But I didn’t know what would come next. Keon wasn’t guilty of attempted murder, but he was guilty of infidelity, of lies, of destroying the trust between us.

Could I forgive him? Did I want to forgive him?

I didn’t know the answer to those questions.

At home, I found a letter from Keon. He had handwritten it and left it on the kitchen table before leaving.

Zola, my dearest Zola,

I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness. I know I destroyed your trust, that I caused you unbearable pain. And I will understand if you never want to see me again. But I want you to know that I love you. I have always loved you, even when I was lying to you, even when I was cheating on you. Deep down in my soul, I knew you were the most important person in my life.

Seraphina was a mistake, a weakness, an attempt to escape the shame, the fear, my sense of uselessness after losing my job. But it’s not an excuse. It’s just a fact.

I’m going to work on myself, go to a therapist, do everything possible to be a better person. Not for you—although of course for you too—but mainly for me, because I never want to be that person who betrays his loved ones again.

I will wait as long as it takes, and if you ever decide to give me another chance, I will do everything possible to deserve that trust.

Yours,

Keon

I read the letter several times, feeling the tears roll down my cheeks. He loved me despite everything. But was love enough to rebuild what had been broken?

Days turned into weeks. I returned to my normal life: work, home, sporadic meetings with friends. Keon called sometimes, asking how I was, suggesting we meet to talk. I accepted. We met in coffee shops, walked in the park, talked about this and that with caution, like two strangers getting to know each other.

He really was going to therapy, working on himself. I saw the changes. He had become more open, more willing to talk about his feelings, his fears, his weaknesses. He no longer tried to be perfect. He didn’t hide his problems.

And little by little, very slowly, something inside me began to change. The anger faded, giving way to understanding. The pain subsided, turning into a sad acceptance.

I didn’t know if we could ever go back to what we were. Probably not. That naive, unconditional love we had at the beginning had died that night when I smelled a strange odor in the wine glass.

But maybe we could build something new, more mature, more conscious, based not on illusions, but on reality—on the understanding that people are imperfect, that they make mistakes, that they can hurt even those they love. And that forgiveness is not forgetting, it’s not justifying. It’s the choice to let go of anger, to free oneself from the burden of resentment, not for the other person, but for oneself.

I didn’t know if I had forgiven Keon. I wasn’t sure if I could fully trust him again. But I knew one thing: I wanted to try. I wanted to give us a chance.

Three months passed since that terrible birthday. Seraphina was in custody, awaiting trial. Keon had found a new job at a small architectural firm, albeit with a lower salary than before. We slowly started paying off the loan, cutting expenses, living more modestly, and we started rebuilding our marriage—slowly, cautiously, step by step.

Keon returned home, first to the guest room, then a few weeks later to our bedroom. We went to couples therapy, working on rebuilding trust, learning to communicate again.

It wasn’t easy. There were days when I woke up and felt so much rage toward him that I couldn’t even look at him. There were nights when I was tormented by nightmares of that evening, of the poisoned wine, of how close I had come to death.

But there were good moments, too. Moments when we laughed together as before, when we held hands walking in the park, when we looked into each other’s eyes and saw not betrayal, but a love that had survived all that.

And I started to believe that maybe we really could overcome it, that our marriage would emerge from this crisis stronger than before.

And then, one ordinary afternoon, everything changed again.

I arrived home from work and found the front door ajar—not forced, not broken, just slightly open, as if someone had left and forgotten to close it, or as if someone had entered and wanted me to know.

My heart sped up. I pulled out my phone, ready to call the police, but then I heard a noise from the dining room. Voices. Keon was talking to someone.

I entered slowly, closing the door behind me, and headed toward the dining room.

What I saw paralyzed me.

Keon was sitting on the sofa. Across from him, in an armchair, was a woman. It wasn’t Seraphina. She was in jail. It was another woman, about my age, with short dark hair and penetrating gray eyes.

“Zola,” Keon said, jumping up when he saw me. His face was pale. Fear was reflected in his eyes. “I can explain everything.”

“Who is that?” I asked, looking at the stranger.

The woman slowly stood up and looked at me with a strange mixture of regret and determination.

“My name is Lenora,” she said. “And I’m sorry that we meet under these circumstances, but there’s something you need to know about your husband—something he’s hidden from you all these years.”

I felt the ground disappear beneath my feet again. More secrets, more lies. When was it going to end?

“What else?” I managed to say. “What else have you been hiding from me, Keon?”

He remained silent, unable to speak.

Lenora looked at him, then at me.

“Keon has a daughter,” she said calmly. “She’s fourteen years old, and I’m her mother.”

The world around me started spinning. A daughter. Keon had a daughter with another woman, fourteen years old. That meant she was born four years after our wedding. When we were trying to have children and couldn’t, when I was undergoing tests, treatments, blaming myself for not being able to get pregnant—and he already had a daughter with another woman.

“Is it true?” My voice sounded strange, distant. “Keon, tell me it’s not true.”

He covered his face with his hands, and from his silence I understood it was true.

My husband, who had sworn his love to me, who had promised to mend his ways, with whom I was trying to rebuild our marriage, had a daughter with another woman—a daughter whose existence I had known nothing about for fourteen years.

And in that moment, I understood that this was not yet the end.

The story that had begun with poisoned wine on my birthday was only the tip of the iceberg. Beneath it lay layers of lies, betrayals, and secrets that I hadn’t even suspected. And I would have to uncover them all if I wanted to understand who my husband really was and who I had been all these years.

A beloved wife, or simply a convenient cover for his double life?

I slowly sank onto the sofa, feeling my legs fail me. Lenora was still standing, looking at me with the same expression of regret. Keon was sitting, his head in his hands, unable to look up.

“Tell me everything,” I said. And my voice sounded surprisingly calm, given the storm of emotions raging inside. “From the beginning. Don’t omit anything. I have the right to know the truth.”

Lenora sat back down in the armchair and clasped her hands in her lap. She looked tired, as if she had been carrying that burden for too long.

“I met Keon 15 years ago,” she began. “I was an interior designer and he was an architect. We met on a project. We grew close. I knew he was married, but I fell in love. I thought it would just be the project, that when it ended, everything would finish naturally. But it didn’t.”

I listened, feeling every word pierce me like a sharp knife.

“When I found out I was pregnant, I told him. He was shocked. He offered me money for an abortion, but I couldn’t. I wanted that child, even if her father couldn’t be by her side.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I looked at Keon, and he finally looked up. His eyes reflected so much pain, so much shame, that for an instant I felt pity for him—but only for an instant.

“Because I’m a coward,” he said hoarsely. “Because I was afraid of losing you, afraid you would leave, that our marriage would fall apart. Lenora agreed to keep silent, to raise our daughter alone. I paid her child support, saw her occasionally, but you knew nothing.”

“All these years,” I whispered. “Fifteen years. While we were trying to have a child, while I blamed myself for being infertile, while I underwent treatments and tests, you already had a daughter.”

“I know how that sounds,” he said.

Lenora leaned forward.

“I’m not trying to justify myself or Keon. What we did was wrong. But I haven’t come here just because of that. There’s a reason I can no longer keep silent.”

“What reason?” I asked.

“My daughter—our daughter, Danica—needs surgery. Urgent heart surgery. Without it, she won’t live for more than a year. The operation costs $50,000. I don’t have that money. Keon can’t pay it either, especially after the loan you took out.”

I looked at Keon. Agony was etched on his face.

“Did you know this about the surgery?” I asked.

“Lenora told me a month ago,” he said. “I’ve tried to get the money, contacted foundations, applied for more loans, but they’ve all been denied. We already have a big loan. We can’t take on another. I didn’t know what to do.”

A month ago. Before Seraphina tried to poison me. So all this time while we were rebuilding our marriage, while I thought we were moving toward healing, he was carrying that burden alone: the secret of his daughter, the fact that the girl was dying and he couldn’t help her.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” My voice broke. “Even now, after everything that has happened, after promising we would be honest with each other.”

“Because I had no right to ask for your help,” Keon replied. “After everything I’ve done to you—the betrayal, the lies—how could I come to you and say, ‘I have a daughter with another woman, and I need money to save her life’?”

He was right. He truly had no right to ask. But now they were asking, and I had to decide what to do with that information.

“Lenora,” I said, turning to her, “why now? Why have you decided to tell me?”

“Because there’s no more time,” she said. “The doctors say the operation must be done in the next two months or it will be too late. I’ve tried everything—foundations, online fundraisers, applying for public aid—but $50,000 is too much for a single mother. And I thought… the insurance.”

My heart pounded.

“The insurance,” I repeated.

“Keon told me you have half-million-dollar life insurance policies on each other. I’m not asking for everything, but if you could help, even partially… Danica isn’t to blame for anything. She didn’t choose to be born from an affair. She’s just a child who wants to live.”

I looked at this woman who had destroyed my family 15 years ago, and I saw in her eyes the desperation of a mother willing to do anything for her daughter. And I thought about that fourteen-year-old girl I had never met, who didn’t know of my existence, but who was my husband’s daughter—an innocent child paying for the mistakes of others.

“You want me to give you money for the operation of my husband’s daughter with another woman?” I said slowly. “That’s what you’re asking me.”

Lenora nodded, not looking away.

“I know how it sounds. I know I have no right to ask, but I have no other choice. Danica is all I have. I will do anything to save her. Anything.”

I stood up, walked over to the window, and looked out at the city at dusk—the lights in the windows, life continuing despite everything. Contradictory feelings fought in my head. Anger toward Keon for yet another lie, yet another betrayal. Pity for an innocent child paying for the sins of adults. Bitterness at realizing that perhaps that was why Keon and I couldn’t have children—because he already had a daughter he was hiding from me.

“Zola,” Keon approached me. “I’m not asking you to help. I have no right. But if there’s the slightest chance… Danica is not guilty of our problems. She’s just a child.”

“A child you didn’t tell me about for fifteen years,” I said.

“I know. And I’ll understand if you say no. I’ll understand if you divorce me right now and never want to see me again. I deserve it. But Danica… she doesn’t deserve to die for my mistakes.”

I closed my eyes, trying to listen to my inner voice amidst all the chaos. What should I do? Help my husband’s daughter with another woman, or refuse and protect myself? Set the boundaries I should have set a long time ago?

“I want to meet her,” I suddenly said, surprised by my own words. “Danica. Before making a decision, I need to see her.”

Lenora and Keon looked at each other.

“Of course,” Lenora nodded. “Whenever you want.”

“Tomorrow,” I decided. “I need tonight to think. Tomorrow at 2 p.m. Tell me where.”

Lenora gave me the address of the hospital where Danica was.

They left together, leaving me alone in a condo that no longer felt like my home. I sat on the sofa, covered my face with my hands, and allowed myself to cry. For the first time in all these months, I wasn’t crying out of anger or resentment, but out of pure grief.

Grief for the lost years, for the broken illusions, for the marriage that no longer existed.

The next day, I went to the hospital. Lenora was waiting for me at the entrance. We walked down a long corridor to the cardiology area, and with every step my heart beat faster. What would I say to that child? How would I look her in the eyes?

Danica was in a room connected to monitors. When I entered, she looked up at me and I froze.

My God, she was an exact copy of Keon. The same brown eyes, the same face shape, the same smile, although now it was pale and weak.

“Hi,” she said. “You must be Zola. Mom said you would come.”

“Hello, Danica. Yes, it’s me.”

I sat in the chair next to the bed. Lenora tactfully left the room, leaving us alone.

“So, you’re my dad’s wife,” Danica said. There was no reproach in her voice, only curiosity. “It sounds weird, I know. I’m used to thinking of him just as Uncle Keon, who comes to visit.”

“He visited you sometimes?” I asked.

“Sometimes. On my birthday, Christmas. He brought gifts. He asked how I was doing in school. I knew he was my biological father. Mom told me when I was ten, but I also knew he had another life, another family, and I didn’t hold a grudge. That’s just how things are.”

What maturity for a fourteen-year-old girl. What understanding of a situation she found herself in through no fault of her own.

“Danica, your mother told me about your illness—that you need surgery,” I said.

She nodded.

“Yes. Congenital heart defect. It didn’t bother me before, but this last year I’ve gotten worse. If I don’t get surgery, my heart will fail. That’s what the doctors say.”

“And aren’t you afraid?” I asked softly.

Danica thought about it.

“Of course, I’m afraid. I’m fourteen. I want to live, study, fall in love, travel, see the world. But if I have to die, at least I know Mom did everything she could, that she fought for me until the end.”

I looked at that fragile girl in the hospital bed and felt something break inside me. All the anger, all the resentment, all the rage I had accumulated toward Keon, toward Lenora—it all vanished before a simple fact.

Before me was a child who wanted to live, a child who needed help.

“Danica,” I said, taking her hand. “You’re going to have your surgery. I’ll take care of it.”

The girl’s eyes widened.

“Really? But why? You don’t have to. I’m the daughter of the woman who… who was with your husband.”

“Because you are not to blame for the mistakes of adults,” I said. “Because all children deserve a chance to live. And because despite everything, I cannot stand idly by and watch an innocent person die if it is within my power to help.”

Danica burst into tears, and I hugged her—that child who was my husband’s daughter, but not my daughter. And in that moment, I understood something.

Forgiveness is not weakness. It is strength. The strength to let go of the past, not to hold a grudge, not to allow bitterness to poison your soul.

When I left the room, Lenora was in the hallway. Her face was soaked with tears.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you, Zola. I know I don’t deserve your generosity, but thank you.”

“It’s not for you,” I said sincerely. “Nor for Keon. It’s for Danica. Only for her.”

I applied for a $50,000 loan, using my share of the condo as collateral. The surgery took place two weeks later. It lasted eight hours, and the entire time I sat in the hospital hallway next to Lenora and Keon. We barely spoke, each lost in our thoughts and our prayers.

When the surgeon came out and said the operation had been a success, that Danica would live, I felt a relief, a joy as great as if she were my own daughter. And perhaps, in a way, she was—not biologically, but spiritually—because I had saved her life. I had given her the opportunity she deserved.

Another two months passed. Danica recovered, returning to normal life. I visited her several times, bringing her books, fruit. We talked, and each time I grew fonder of that intelligent girl, mature for her age.

And with Keon, we finally talked. We talked seriously about our future.

We met in the same park where I had once met Seraphina. We sat on a bench, and I told him what I had decided.

“Keon, I can’t continue with our marriage,” I said.

He nodded, as if he had expected it.

“I understand.”

“It’s not because I don’t love you. I do. Or I did. I no longer know. It’s because I can’t keep living in uncertainty with the constant fear of discovering another secret, another lie. You need time to figure things out, to know who you are, what you want. And I need time to heal, to recover, to find myself again. So… divorce?”

“Yes,” I said. “But not out of anger, not out of revenge, but because it’s the right thing for both of us.”

Keon took my hand, brought it to his lips, and kissed it.

“Thank you, Zola. For everything. For saving Danica when you could have refused, for giving me the opportunity to be better, even if that means losing you. I will always love you. You know that. And I will remember the good that was between us. The 18 years weren’t a complete lie. There was a lot of love, a lot of happiness. We simply grew in different directions. And that’s okay.”

We sat for a while longer, holding hands, saying goodbye to the past, to the people we were, to the marriage that once seemed unbreakable.

We divorced six months later, amicably, without scandal, without drama. We sold the condo, paid off all the loans, and divided what was left equally.

Keon rented a small apartment near Lenora and Danica, and started spending more time with his daughter, rebuilding a relationship damaged by years of absence.

And I bought a small studio apartment in the suburbs. I started a new life. I met new people, signed up for painting classes—something I had dreamed of for years but never found time for. I started traveling—weekend getaways to nearby cities, but it was a start.

A year after the divorce, I met Maurice. He was a high school history teacher, divorced, with two grown children. A quiet, kind, and above all, honest man. With him, there wasn’t the fiery passion I had with Keon at the beginning, but there was reliability, stability, a deep respect. No secrets, no dark areas.

We started dating slowly, without rush. I wasn’t in a hurry for new commitments, for a new marriage. I simply enjoyed the company, the conversations, the walks together.

And Keon married Lenora two years after our divorce—not out of love, as he confessed to me in one of our rare encounters, but out of a sense of responsibility, a desire to give Danica a real family. They were happy in their own way—a quiet happiness without grand emotions, but with a deep mutual understanding.

As for Seraphina, she was sentenced to twelve years in prison for attempted murder. I felt neither rage nor a desire for revenge toward her, just the relief that justice had been served.

Now, sitting by the window of my small apartment, drinking coffee and watching the sunrise, I think about the journey I’ve taken. That birthday when everything changed. The strange smell of the wine that saved my life. The swapping of glasses that uncovered the truth.

Sometimes life breaks us to make us stronger. Sometimes betrayal hurts more than physical pain. But in the end, we always have the choice to remain anchored in resentment and bitterness, or to move forward, forgiving not for others, but for ourselves.

I chose the latter, and although the path was painful, although there were many tears and sleepless nights, I don’t regret it. Because now I know myself better. I know my strength, my limits, my capacity for compassion, even where it is unexpected.

And when years later, at Danica’s wedding, a beautiful, healthy young woman with a brilliant future ahead of her, she approached me, hugged me, and whispered, “Thank you for my life,” I understood that everything had been worth it.

Every tear, every sleepless night, every painful decision—because in the end, the meaning of life is not to avoid pain, but to pass through it and come out on the other side a better person than you were.

My story began with poisoned wine and a swap of glasses, but it ended with healing, forgiveness, and a new life that I built with my own hands. And that was the most valuable thing I could take away from that entire nightmare.