Page 106 of The Paradise Problem

He lets out a humorless laugh. “You don’t know my father.”

“You’re right, and I mean, what I do know is horrifying, but I also think your worldview is totally broken if you think any of you with your very legitimate careers are better off sacrificing your happiness to that man just to make sure you can still wear Gucci to take the trash out.”

“Anna, I can’t unilaterally decide to alter this huge aspect of their lives,” he says, his voice hoarse with frustration.

“But it’s not you!” I cry. “It’s Ray. Ray has made you think the responsibility lies with you. Ray is the one who’s threatening to challenge the trust so you’ll do what he wants. Ray doesn’t have to take this to the courts. What he’s doing is emotional manipulation, Liam. You don’t have to fall for it.”

“Whether they need the money or not, whether it’s fair or not, whether or not I’m being manipulated, at the end of the day, our marriage is a fraud. We did lie. I’m the reason my siblings are in this situation. Choosing to protect myself in all of this, despite all of that, is exactly what my father would do. I have to make the other choice.”

Oh. Oh, Liam.

“But would your siblings choose you?” I ask, feeling disgusted by all of them. “You know they wouldn’t, Liam. Maybe they love you, but they’re broken.” I take a step closer. “How many of them spoke up to protect Thuy at the restaurant? How many of them blinked about buying a house because Charlie’s rental flooded? They brought who knows how much crap and garbage to a protected island in the middle of the ocean. If you ask them to pick between you and money, they will choose money every time.”

“You don’t know that,” he says quietly.

“Maybe not,” I say, “but I think you do. I’m the only one here offering you unconditional support and love—and I’m not even asking you to choose me. I’m asking you to choose yourself. Because they won’t.”

Liam’s expression shuts down, and I know I’ve gone too far, but I don’t care.

He walks back to the window, looking out over the Singapore skyline. “Well, luckily,” he says, voice barely audible, “I’m not forcing them to choose.”

Thirty-Two

LIAM

Anna and I break up about sixteen hours before a fifteen-hour flight. Which, I’m sure I don’t need to say, is pretty fucking awful. I’ve been seated beside strangers on a plane dozens of times, but never has that stranger been someone I shared a bed with. Never has that stranger been someone who looked at me and saw all of the good things I want to embody. Never has that stranger been someone I thought was on the way to being the most important person in my life.

We land in Los Angeles, and once we’re off the plane, I can tell Anna is dead set on getting the hell away from me, but we still do have some business to wrap up.

“Anna, wait,” I say, catching her wrist just before she manages to get on the escalator down to baggage claim. We step out of the stream of traffic, walking to the side of the no-man’s-land area of LAX customs where she stares up at me with red, blank eyes.

Had she been crying the entire flight?

“We have the issue of the wire transfer to settle.”

She blinks away, and for a beat I fear she’ll tell me she doesn’t want my dirty money after all, that she can’t stomach taking it. But then she inhales a steadying breath, and nods. “What information do you need?”

“Your routing number,” I tell her. “And your account number.”

“I can text it?”

“I think it’s better to write it down.”

Of all of the painful moments in the past twenty-four hours, this is the worst, I think. Both of us awkwardly searching for a pen, for a scrap of paper to write on. Anna shifts her purse onto her knee, digging around. “I got it,” she says, pulling out a pen from the Crowne Plaza Hotel at Changi Airport and a receipt for something she must have bought to eat after she left me alone in the hotel room. I stare helplessly as she swipes her phone awake, opens her banking app. I stare down at the screen, blankness washing through me as I realize her checking account has about twenty dollars in it. She’s already used the ten thousand dollars I sent her to pay her father’s medical bills.

Anna writes down her account number, the routing number. She straightens and hands it to me, not meeting my eyes.

I glance down and my chest twists as I realize it’s on the back of a receipt for a cheap hot dog. “I’ll send it tonight.”

“Don’t send more than we agreed on,” she says.

“Anna—”

“I know you, Liam. I don’t want you to send more.”

I nod, miserable. At this moment, I truly hate my father. I also hate myself. I hate the mess this has made, and how many lives will be affected if I don’t figure this out. Not just my family, all of them. I realize she’s waiting for me to break the tension, release us both; that it probably feels impolite to just turn and walk away after someone has assured you that they’ll be sending ninety thousand dollars to your bank account. So I gesture for her to lead us back to the escalator, where Anna collects her bags and wordlessly disappears into the crowd headed to the taxi line. I watch her until I can’t even see the pink of her hair anymore, knowing it’s entirely possible I will never see my wife again.

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