Chapter 1409
After turning on his phone, a flood of notifications popped up.
Darwin's breathing was rapid. The hospital room's air conditioning was on full blast, yet large beads of sweat still formed on his forehead.
The minute or so after turning on the phone felt like an eternity.
Darwin could hear his heart pounding like a drum.
The other person was amused by his state, filling the air with a sharp, grating laugh.
Once the notification sounds stopped, Darwin's gaze settled on the Facebook screen.
He had three users pinned at the top of his Facebook: his wife, Chicago, and Charles.
At this moment, all three had unread messages.
Charles had the fewest, with only three unread messages.
His wife and Chicago both showed 99+ unread messages.
Darwin's eyes turned red.
"You think any of this will change anything?" The mocking voice rang out. The man dressed in black paced back and forth at the foot of the bed, hands clasped behind his back. "Listening to these, reading these, will only add to your guilt. That's all."
Darwin glanced up at him.
Then he reached for the Bluetooth headphones on the bedside table and put them on.
Noise-canceling mode activated.
The annoying voice across from him was silenced.
Darwin didn't look at him again.
Taking a deep breath, he tapped on Fiona's profile picture.
The oldest unread message dated back to the third day after Darwin went missing.
It was a voice message.
Darwin played it, feeling as if his heart was being pierced by a sharp blade.
"Darwin, it's been three days. You need to come home, or I'm really going to be mad."
The messages that followed were a mix of voice messages, texts, and most of them are life updates.
What she had for breakfast, what she had for lunch, business trips she went on, attending the kids' sports events, how Charles and Chicago were praised at the parent-teacher meetings, sharing pictures of flowers by the roadside, clouds in the sky.
Fiona shared every beautiful moment she saw and felt with Darwin, who was missing and possibly dead.
Of course, it wasn't all beautiful moments.
Fiona would occasionally complain, saying he was really disappointing, that she wanted to leave him, that he had coerced her into marrying him.
Fiona said she wanted to die with him, but he refused.
He left her to bear the pain of separation.
One voice message would be her calling him irresponsible, saying she wanted a divorce.
The next would be her crying, saying she could forgive him, miss him, and begging him to come home soon.
Over the course of more than six months, thousands of unanswered messages.
Darwin read and listened to each one carefully, tears streaming down his face the entire time.
Except for the few months when Darwin was home and there were no messages, after he was hospitalized, Fiona continued to send messages to his Facebook every day.
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