Page 153 of Poison Vows

“You were diagnosed with bronchopulmonary dysplasia at birth,” I tell her, which shocks her. “Due to your grandparents’ meticulous care, your symptoms have been mild since you were a baby.”

“What?” she gasps. “How do you know?”

“I know.”

“And yet you and I jumped over the cliff in that damn blizzard!”

I’d gladly take the blame for every hurt, ache, and injury in her life, but because of the situation now, I want her to always know the truth as much as possible.

“Had I known back then, I wouldn’t have done that, but I also didn’t see any other way out.”

My wife silently glares at me, so I continue telling her what I found out.

“Your mother abandoned you because you, just like me, were born sick,” I explain gently. “I think Nurse Marie and Spidernever told you this because it wasn’t necessary for you to know the truth at the time.”

“Wow,” she chuckles drily, her eyes glowing with unshed tears, “you really know more about me than I know about myself, huh?”

For the life of me, I wasn’t prepared to see my wife in this much pain over her entire life crumbling in front of her.

“Yes,” I mutter.

“For how long?”

“Not long.”

“Liar.”

“I’m sorry. If I had a better choice back then, I would’ve never jumped over the cliff with you. I also lost a fresh new heart transplant.”

Angel grows incredibly still on the bed like a statue in a blizzard.

It’s my first time ever telling her about this, which stuns me too. Why am I telling her this now?

“You had a heart transplant around that time?” she questions softly, turning onto her side to look at me.

I look away, unable to look into those expressive eyes that draw me in every single time.

“Emmett?” she presses, with an urgency in her voice that I can’t ignore. So, I tell her.

“My mother ran around this planet recruiting surgeons, making sizable donations to medical researchers for congenital heart defect pioneers, cardio experts, and anyone she thought could help me,” I start, my mind flashing back to the time I was ten years old, about to die. “By some miracle, they found a matching donor. The donor was around my age too, which devasted my mother and made me hate myself even more. Another kid had tragically lost his life for me to keep my underserved one. How unfair was that?”

Angel is silently listening, her brown eyes set on me.

“So, Mom went above and beyond to find the family of the child. She wanted to know for certain that there was no foul play around that child’s passing, and when she finally concluded her investigation, I was already semi-dead.”

“Wait, what?”

I turn to look at Angel fully. “You already know my case is extremely rare. Even with a heart transplant from an almost matching donor, the weak construction of my arteries and heart valves makes it difficult to sustain regular heart function, so even though the donor and surgery were a miracle from God, it never quite guaranteed my health for long, but then that very week, my mother disappeared.”

I remember every detail of that time.

The distraught look on my mother’s face.

The way she had been constantly spooked by small matters, was running her hands through her hair every two minutes, looked so nervous and out of sorts that I knew I was the cause of the stress.

It’s only later that I found out that the people who hated my mother were going to use me to get her punished and ousted. After listening to the conversation between my wife and that old geezer, I have more information, coupled with what I found… I have to go talk to that man.

“I was just a kid then. I knew my mother had disappeared under the most suspicious activities, and that I was to blame, so I didn’t care anymore. By some fluke chance, I met a dazed and out-of-sorts girl who wanted to throw herself away. I was fascinated. But then someone wanted to snuff out that glimmer of curiosity, so I didn’t think twice to jump with you.”

---