The Spare Phone Held Years Of Spare Love Chapter 09

The Spare Phone Held Years Of Spare Love Chapter 09

It was an overnight train heading south. 

I had booked a no–frills sleeper berth, the middle 

bunk. 

Years ago, when I could not afford flights for work 

trips, I used to ride like this all the time. 

Later, after I became a director, I got used to 

business class. 

Lying in a narrow sleeper again felt strangely 

unfamiliar. 

Across from me was a young woman who looked 

like she had just graduated from college. She was 

lying on her stomach, watching a show on her 

tablet. 

She glanced at me and smiled. 

“Are you traveling alone?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Where are you headed?” 

I gave her the name of a small coastal town down 

south. 

She blinked. 

“For vacation?” 

“To live.” 

She gave a soft oh and didn’t ask anything else. 

The train began to move. 

Outside the window, the gray buildings on the 

edge of the city slowly gave way to fields, then to 

distant mountains. 

I pulled the curtain shut. 

I could not sleep. 

In the end, I had still brought those letters with me. 

They were in my carry–on now, tucked beside my 

passport, bank documents, and property deed. 

I took them out. 

The brown paper envelope was unsealed. Inside 

was a thick stack of paper. 

Letter paper, sticky notes, printed pages, loose 

sheets torn from a notebook. 

The handwriting changed from page to page. 

Some were neat, some rushed. On a few pages, 

the lines had gone crooked halfway through. 

I pulled out the top sheet. 

The date was April 2015. 

He had written: 

[Today I passed a flower shop and saw a pot of 

jasmine. 

It reminded me of the year she first moved into the dorms. She kept a jasmine plant on the windowsill and said once it bloomed, the whole summer 

would smell sweet. 

Later, the plant died. She didn’t cry. She only put 

the dried stems in a drawer. 

I thought she had forgotten. 

Only today did I learn she had kept them all along. 

I didn’t buy that jasmine plant. 

Who would I buy it for? 

If I bought it for her, she wouldn’t accept it. 

If I bought it for someone else, it wouldn’t be fair to that person.] 

I turned to the second page. 

November 2016. 

[We’ve been married for one year. 

She learned how to make my favorite food. She learned how to iron shirts. She learned to keep dinner warm for me whenever I worked late. 

She learned so fast that I almost forgot she used to be someone who was afraid to even use a 

microwave. 

The day her father died, I knelt in the hospital. 

hallway. 

He gripped my hand and said Claire had been afraid of the dark since she was little, and that I 

had to stay with her from then on. 

I said yes. 

I didn’t keep a single promise I made.] 

The third page. 

September 2018. 

[She asked me today why I didn’t want children. 

I told her work was too busy and that we should 

wait. 

She said nothing. 

What I really wanted to say was that it wasn’t 

because I didn’t want a child with you. 

It was because I was afraid. 

I was afraid the child would look like you. 

I was afraid that every time I saw that face, I 

would remember what I had done. 

Even more than that, I was afraid the child would 

look like me. 

Weak, selfish, and capable of betraying someone 

who loved them. 

So I kept waiting. 

Waiting for the right time, even though I knew that 

time would never come.] 

The train rocked gently. 

The young woman across from me had already fallen asleep, her breathing slow and even. 

I folded the pages one by one and put them back into the envelope. 

Outside the window, the night was pitch–black. Now and then, one or two lights flashed past like 

falling stars. 

Then I found the last page. 

September 2020. 

[Today Laurel asked me if I loved her. 

I knew she wasn’t asking about herself. 

She was asking about the woman back home in 

the city. 

I didn’t answer. 

Nellie hasn’t been born yet. 

But I already don’t know how I’m supposed to face 

her one day. 

I don’t know how to tell her that her father once. 

loved one woman and failed another. 

I have no idea how to tell her that the second love 

should never have existed in the first place. 

Nellie, when you grow up, don’t be like Daddy. 

Daddy is a coward.] 

I slipped the letters back into the envelope. 

The train entered a tunnel. The world outside went 

completely black, and my face appeared in the 

glass without a single tear on it. 

I turned off the reading light, and the train car sank 

into darkness. 

The train kept moving south, the steady clatter of 

the tracks sounding almost like a heartbeat. 

I didn’t know what time I fell asleep. 

I only knew that when I woke up, the sky had 

turned bright. 

Outside the window were rice paddies, and white 

egrets stood on the backs of cattle in the 

distance, like ink dropped onto pale paper. 

I leaned back against the pillow. 

My phone had no signal. I didn’t bother checking 

1. it.