A Ruling Passion – Chapter 1773

As her eyes grazed her daughter’s profile, beads of tears fell from Melanie’s eyes. “Millie, my sweet girl... Will you blame your Mommy for leaving you and your Dad one day? Mommy’s sorry, but she just doesn’t think she will find happiness in her life here. I want to try another way, a different life. But know that your Mommy won’t go far from you, and all of my love is always for you. When Mommy finally finds her footing while she lives alone, when she finally has surplus money, I’ll come and try talking your Dad into releasing you into my care, okay? Mommy really wants to bring you with her; it’s just that there’s too many uncertainties...”

Melissa’s little hand reached out to her mother’s cheek before wiping the tears away. “Mommy, what’s ‘happiness’?” she asked innocently. “Is it very big and important?”

Melanie found herself grasping at air for an answer. Is happiness ever “big and important”? She did not know, heck, she did not even know what it meant to be happy-it was cryptic, almost enigmatic, and difficult to be expatriated through words and descriptions.

The only thing Melanie knew she could explain, though, was that the life she was in right now was... depressing. Every early morning, Alejandro rose, went to work, and left Melanie alone at home to care for the kid. She was never a Capital native and she did not know anyone here, she spent most of her life in Ayashe before her marriage, and the only friends she had made here were Arianne and Tiffany. She watched her life waste away, day by day, in this claustrophobic little cage.

If he loved her-if he truly loved her, then all this... she could endure. Love was often a panacea to the malaise of mundanities, but Melanie could not even get that from him. Because of him, she left the city she grew up in and confined herself at home to be the perfect, textbook-good wife-it was being wrapped tightly in a thick, black shroud so fitting that it left not a slit for air to come in. It blindfolded her from the vibrant colors outside. It gave her no taste of his warmth or affection. It almost asphyxiated her.