Revenge14 min read
The Durian, the Recording, and the Choice I Made
ButterPicks12 views
I found out I was pregnant two months before our wedding.
"Are you sure?" Dillon asked, holding the test like it was a fragile promise.
"It showed two lines," I said, and watched the way his face went soft, like melting butter. "Yes. It's real."
He laughed and kept saying the same thing. "This is real? This is real?"
"Yes," I said, because I wanted him to hear it again.
We went to the hospital the next day, and the doctor confirmed it: heartbeat, tiny moving, not just two lines on plastic. Dillon sat perfectly still in the chair, like a man waiting to be taught how to be somebody's father.
"Mom!" he said on speaker after we left the clinic. "Emilie—I'm going to be a dad. You're going to be a grandma!"
His mother answered and then said they needed to talk. Dillon's smile faded when his voice fell into that quiet place people use for "serious."
At our home-countryside dinner, when everyone was busy and the rice was steaming, I wanted to nap. A slow, warm tired came over me; pregnancy made me clumsy, made the room foggy.
But I couldn't sleep. Voices came from the living room, low and urgent. I cracked the door and listened.
"She just found out," Dillon said. "I think we should—"
"Why be stupid?" Gloria said. "When a woman is pregnant, she can't just run away. She will be tied down. The bride price — three thousand, thirty thousand—whatever. We give less, she still marries our son. She can't leave us with a loose belly and a scandal."
I felt my knees go soft. The world leaned and tilted.
"Take the money and buy a car," Elden said in a softer tone. "Car for visits, car for trips. Use the rest for the family. It's sensible."
"Buy a car? Use our savings meant for their startup?" I whispered to myself.
When Dillon stepped into the bedroom, his smile was thin.
"Did you hear?" I asked him, voice steadier than I felt.
He sat down beside me as if to anchor me. "They're worried," he said. "The business is slow. We can postpone the fixed deposit. It will be OK. We'll talk to them."
"You heard them plan to cut the bride price because I'm pregnant," I said. "And you are okay with them taking advantage? We agreed eight thousand on both sides and save it. Now they want three thousand on their part—why should it change because I told you I'm carrying our child?"
"Emilie, it's complicated," he murmured. "My parents are worried. They're trying to be practical."
"Show me practical," I said, remembering the day Dillon proposed on the college track. He'd promised then: "I won't let them hurt you."
"I didn't know they'd say that. I told them it was our decision, but—"
"But you didn't stop them when they were counting my worth," I said. "Go tell them to keep the agreement. If they won't, I won't marry your family."
Dillon stared. "You mean that?"
"I mean it," I said. "Either keep the plan or cancel. I won't be turned into a bargain."
He didn't move. He didn't speak for a long time.
"Fine," I said, annoyance heating me. "If you won't, I'll speak with them."
I pushed the door open and found Gloria smiling the same smile that had asked me to sit. She patted the couch. "Emilie, dear, come sit. This is a happy thing."
"Does it look like I'm happy?" I asked.
"It is good news," Gloria said, all sugar. "But, you know, times are hard. We can lower the bride price to three thousand now and make the rest into a car. That will help with visits and checkups."
I almost laughed at how smooth she was. "And my money? Your plan was that our eight thousand and your eight thousand will both go into a term deposit for our startup. Are you rethinking that because I'm pregnant?"
"Well," Gloria said, pretending to smooth a wrinkle. "Your family seems better off. It's only fair that your dowry remains. You understand how economies are."
Dillon sat mute. His hands folded in his lap like a man who had agreed to a small lie and then another.
When Gloria said, "And don't be silly—after she has a child, who will want to marry her if she doesn't do what we say now?" I felt the floor tilt.
"You speak of me as though I'm a thing," I said. "We agreed. Keep it or we cancel the wedding."
Gloria's eyes narrowed. "Do you think you can walk away with a belly that soon? People have standards. Women who have had abortions, or women who have children without marriage, people talk. Would your parents let you come home then? Think of your reputation."
Dillon said nothing. He looked at me and then away.
"Give me a minute," he said, and left the room.
He had said "I won't let them hurt you" before. He had said it with such certainty that I kept that memory like a warm coat. But now, his silence was a thin thread. I couldn't hold to it.
I went home with my parents that night, my eyes hot with tears. My father, Magnus, slung an arm over my shoulders and said, "We'll take care of you. Whatever you decide."
My mother, Kendall, made me warm milk and sat worrying at my sleeve.
"My heart is a little cracked," I told them. "He said I'll be supported, but he didn't stop them."
"People say foolish things when money is counted," my father said. "They've never found themselves in your shoes. We'll confront them."
"Don't make things worse," my mother said. "Talk with him, Emilie. Think clearly."
Dillon tried to fix it with messages. He sent apologies, then calls. "Emilie, I'm sorry. I should have stood up. I was scared. I promise I talked to them. I told them it stays the same."
His messages came one after the other: "I was wrong. I'm coming tonight." "I can't lose you." "I'm sorry." The sort of thing that softens like butter.
He came anyway the next morning with a silly, childish offering: a durian. He chopped it open, left the smell, flung the spiky rind on the kitchen floor, and pretended to present my favorite fruit as if renouncing the argument.
"Emilie," he said, kneeling and grinning. "My mistake. Original plan. Bride price stays. I promise."
"Will you actually say that to your parents?" I asked, watching his face for resolve.
"Yes," he said. "I will sort this out."
But one night, when I was up getting water and heard him whisper on the bathroom line—"Mom, wait. She just found out. If we wait a little, she will have no choice. She'll accept. Just wait until the bump shows. She can't just walk away then,"—my hands went cold.
I pressed record on my phone.
He spoke softly, like a man scheming. "If you wait, she will be trapped. She will go along with less. She won't be able to walk away with a belly."
I sat there holding the recording like a small stone in my palm. The sound of his voice folding into a plan felt like betrayal.
I thought of the warm way he had held me the night he came back. I thought of his arms, his lullaby of promises. And I thought of the voice on the phone, convincing mothers to do what it took.
I decided I would not let them win by default.
I scheduled a procedure. I told no one. My parents helped with the appointment, and the pain I felt after was not just physical. It was an aching that settled under my ribs.
Dillon left for a two-month business trip three days later. The distance was a thin wound that had time to scab.
Months passed in a way that felt like a slow sharpening. I buried myself in work and in quiet study. I wanted, more than anything, to be the person I'd been before the plan of our wedding took over every breath. I wanted my choices to be my own.
Then, by luck or fate, the man from my childhood returned to our neighborhood.
Mikhail Douglas sat in my parent's living room like a man who owned his space. He was the boy everyone remembered; now his voice carried the weight of a man who ran a company's domestic branch. He called me "kid" the way one calls someone fondly to remember the old days.
"I heard you were having trouble," he said one afternoon. "Is the man playing chess with your life?"
"It was a pawn game," I said.
He smiled that dry half-smile. "Come on. Tell me. I owe you one for hiding that silly note I dropped in your locker when we were fifteen."
We shared the story slowly. Mikhail crossed his legs and said, "If you want, I can come by at noon. I can 'happen' to be in the area."
I laughed. "Now we plan 'happenstances'?"
He shrugged. "The world likes drama. So do I."
The day Dillon returned, he came straight to my house with his parents. He carried a box of oranges and had that practiced smile.
I wore lipstick on that morning, red and precise, and a dress that showed my waist. Gloria went into immediate worry mode.
"Emilie," she said, running a hand over my arm, "don't wear makeup. It is dangerous during pregnancy. How can you care for the baby like this? You must be careful."
"My doctor advised otherwise," I said. "I just like to wear it."
"And tight dresses are not for pregnant women," Gloria said. "You must be comfortable."
"I am comfortable," I said, letting the anger rise. "Because I decided."
Then I told them.
"I don't have a baby," I said. "I had a procedure."
For a few seconds there was a silence that could be heard.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Dillon demanded, hurt folding into anger.
"Because your mother and your father had already decided to use my pregnancy as leverage to change our agreement."
"I never—" Dillon started, face a landscape of denial.
"My father and I recorded your conversations," I said. "We have what you said about waiting, about making me 'unable to walk away.'"
Dillon's lips went thin. Gloria's face went a showy white.
"How dare you!" Gloria shrieked. "You recorded us? You are such a woman! You used it to—"
I opened my phone and hit play. My father's deep voice before the recording merged into Dillon's soft, plotting tone.
"Wait," Dillon said hoarsely, panic like a small bird in a jar.
"How could you think this is acceptable?" I said to Gloria. "You counted my worth. You expected me to bargain my life. This is not a negotiation."
"That's nonsense," Gloria snapped. "We were practical!"
"Neighbors," someone called from the street. "What's going on?"
Dillon stood as if he had been struck. He tried to pull Gloria away.
"Stay," I said quietly. "Let it be known."
It was then the man I'd known as our old neighbor took out a megaphone. Mikhail. He stepped forward and clicked it on.
"Attention," he said. "I think the whole block should hear something."
Gloria's mouth opened. "What are you doing? This is private!"
Mikhail did a small, theatrical bow. "Every private cruelty deserves daylight."
He played the recording through the speaker. Dillon's voice explained the plan to "wait until she couldn't leave." Gloria's voice came through too, the scent of scheming to save money like it had been polished.
Neighbors came out of their houses. A child on a bicycle stopped and leaned his chin on the handlebars. The old woman who fed birds came to the gate. People gathered, some whispering, some open-mouthed.
"Is that him?" a neighbor asked. "Is that your son, Gloria?"
"Mother, apologize," Dillon whispered, taking a step forward. He looked like a puppet whose strings someone had yanked.
"Apologize?" Gloria hissed. "For what? For trying to keep my family safe? For trying to make sensible arrangements?"
Mikhail turned toward the crowd. "So sensible you thought playing with someone's life like an object was 'sensible'?" His voice carried a cold, public note.
Neighbors had smartphones. A dozen people took videos. A woman held up her phone and began to livestream. "Listen to this," she said. "Listen to how they talk about bargaining a woman like a thing."
"What do you have to say now?" the neighborhood woman asked as her stream collected hearts and comments.
They began to speak up. "That's awful." "How could they?" "She looked so nice. I didn't expect..." "Those are nasty words."
Gloria's composure cracked. She began the cycle all bullies know: anger, denial, blame. "You were lying. You recorded us illegally. You're hysterical."
"Did you think this would stay private?" Mikhail asked. "You told your son to wait until she had no options. That is cruel."
Dillon's face went from stunned to ashamed to defiant, then back to shame. "I didn't mean—" he said.
"You meant to secure us," Gloria said, voice rising. "You're trying to ruin everything for us!"
"People here saw it," someone else said. "We saw you hissing about counting money. Shame."
"Neighbors!" Gloria cried, suddenly flinging herself into a different posture. "Please, be fair. We are a respectable family. This is private. My son is a good man."
The murmurs didn't stop. Phones clicked. A few women crossed their arms, their faces hardened like they'd each been measured at the same rude standard Gloria had used for me. Some older men shook their heads. A group of mothers at a nearby laundry line exchanged looks like verdicts.
Gloria moved to step forward, hand raised to scold, but the crowd turned like one body and closed the space around her with polite, sharp distance.
"You think we should keep it between us?" one neighbor said. "We get to decide if we keep quiet when someone treats someone like that?"
Gloria's face shifted: fury, then shock, then as the crowd's whispers became louder, a sort of pleading. "Please! I'm sorry! I'm sorry I said those things. I was worried. My husband and I—"
"It is not your worry that bothers us," a neighbor said. "It is how you told her she was less than a person. My daughter would never be spoken to like that."
"Shame on you," another woman said, and several neighbors nodded in agreement.
Humiliation isn't a measured instrument—it is a contagion. It grew fast. Phones streamed. Voices repeated the recorded words. Comments and whispers repeated what Gloria had tried to keep private.
Her eyes, once so bright with greed, now flicked around for allies. Dillon lurched forward and put a hand on her arm, but the other neighbors' looks were like tiny barriers he could not cross.
Mikhail's gaze was calm. "You wanted to bargain her. You wanted to trap her so she wouldn't walk. You counted her. That is not a family value. That is theft of another person's life."
Gloria's face changed as the neighbor's outrage touched her reality. Her mouth opened, then closed. Her voice quivered. "I only said that because—" She groped for words. "Because times are hard!"
"Times are hard for everyone," a woman said. "But constraining another person with fear because of your money? That is cowardice."
Gloria's denial crumbled into trembling plea. "Please! I didn't mean to… Please…"
Her voice, meant to be loud enough to command, broke into small, sharp sobs. People in the gathering began to shake their heads, some scoffing, some pitying, and some clapping small, satisfied hands—not because they loved cruelty, but because they love fairness.
"You expect people to trust you now?" a neighbor asked. "How can they? How can he—"
Dillon stood with his head lowered. Some people blamed him; some nodded at his failure. A teenage boy pointed his phone and said, "He always looked like a coward, courting people to suit his family."
Dorothy, the woman who had once had a party with Gloria, approached, folding her arms. "I thought you were nicer," she said flatly. "All I heard was calculation."
Dillon's face crumpled into something raw and unreadable. The hoodie of composure had slid, and there was a man inside who had thought of comfort and convenience before another person's rights.
Then Gloria did something that turned the tide completely: she lunged forward and slapped a woman who had said "shame." The slap was loud in the quiet. A sound that had once bought attention now made her look savage.
"No!" people cried. "Stop!"
"My son!" she screamed, then pointed at Dillon. "My son was only trying to do right!"
Enough. The people had had enough.
Two elder women stepped forward and, with the quiet authority of those who have been wronged and know the language of neighboring judgment, turned their backs on Gloria. "You can stand there and pretend you didn't say it. But you have shown us who you are. We will not welcome you in our social circle. We will not attend your events."
The punishment that day was not legal. It was social, and it was terrible in the way that small towns know how to be: it is an amputation of approval. Gloria's smile froze, and she tried to bargain. "I'll apologize. Do that for us."
"Your apology is to clean up what you broke," one woman said. "Publicly. Not here on the street; at the community center, next week, when everyone is present. No half-pleas."
At that, neighbors started suggesting conditions: a public apology, a promise to donate to the community center, counseling for the family, and—perhaps worst to Gloria—no invitation to neighborhood gatherings for a year. Dillon's face looked like a man watching his castle crumble.
Gloria's breath hitched. "You can't—"
"Then don't speak of her like that again," another older man said. "Don't let your son speak that way. Teach him to be better."
"And if you won't," said a woman who had stayed quiet until now, "then we will make sure he loses standing at work. We will not recommend him. We will not cooperate."
Dillon turned and grabbed for words. "Please. I didn't—"
"Then begin by apologizing now," Mikhail said.
Dillon did, in stuttering, true apology. "I'm sorry. I am wrong. I—"
The apology sounded empty to some. The crowd's response was not uniform. Some accepted it; some didn't.
Gloria's crying turned to anger and then to pleading, and she left finally, escorted by Elden, who looked half-betrayed. Later, I learned she demanded Dillon break off contact with me.
The punishment was the wagging tongue, the cold shoulder of neighbors, the preserved videos of the recording. It was the way the world measured the insult and decided who to trust. It was not the prison or the fine, but it was something worse for them: loss of face that swallowed an entire morning.
Afterward, Dillon visited my parents to try to explain. He came with a bouquet of wilted lilies and with a voice that sounded like the man who had tried to scheme.
"Emilie," he said. "I am sorry. I was wrong. I can fix this. I will fix this. I can be better."
"You wanted me to have no choice," I said quietly. "You wanted to wait until I couldn't walk. I did not let you get there."
He looked at me like a ghost. "I was wrong. Our family is tangled. My mother—"
"Your mother chose a bargain. Your words arranged it. What I did was take away your plan."
"You aborted our child," he said. The accusation was meant to wound.
"I made a choice," I said. "I made a choice for myself."
He stayed quiet, then left. The neighborhood's verdict had already dug at the roots of their life.
There were other punishments after that day, different for each person.
Gloria found that the social invitations she'd relied on evaporated. At the book club where she'd been the boss of the gossip table, she was asked not to return. At the church bake sale, someone took away her pies and gave them to another woman. The sting of those cuts came in quiet measures that added up every day.
Dillon tried to patch things at work, but colleagues who had seen the videos kept their distance. His proposal for promotion was quietly slowed. He tried to make up to me by doing chores, making ridiculous attempts at penance; his gestures became small and clumsy, like a man trying to apologize with a trowel.
Elden, who had been careful and quiet, found himself avoided at the card games. Even his friends said, quietly, "Pick your battles."
The thing that stung most was how their tribe thinned. Friends and allies who liked the benefits of dining with them suddenly remembered other commitments. One by one, support thinned like a scarf unraveling.
I left for my dream. I applied to a program overseas and got accepted. I told them I was leaving. They scoffed, they begged, they tried to shame. I smiled and booked a ticket.
Before I left, Mikhail came to the station with a small box and a note. "For courage and honesty," he said.
"Thank you," I said. "For making sure they heard."
"Someone had to," he said.
We did not become lovers overnight. We reconnected as friends, the sort of friends who had history and now had truth. He was a steady presence at the edges of my new life.
On the night I left, I packed my bag. On the table, there was a durian opened in half—the last ridiculous offering Dillon had brought me once in a failed attempt to be forgiven. I laughed at the memory of him kneeling with spiky fruit, and I put a small scrap of the rind in my pocket like a talisman.
"Don't forget to love yourself," Mikhail said as we stood at the gate.
"That's my life plan," I replied, thinking of the recording, of the way my choices had been put on a ledger, and the way I had taken back control.
When the plane took off, I looked at my phone and at the saved recording. I kept it, not as a weapon but as a memory of the moment I stopped letting others decide my worth. I could have let them bargain me. I chose instead to be the person who makes her own decisions.
I spent the year abroad studying, learning to be a person who selects herself first. Mikhail visited in December and brought a small cake.
"You look freer," he said.
"I feel freer," I answered. "And heavier at the same time—by that I mean full of my choices."
He smiled like someone satisfied at the growth of an old friend.
"Promise me one thing," he said halfway.
"No promises," I said, laughing. "Besides, you never kept your promise to not steal my chips in high school."
He laughed, bowed, and said, "Then let's keep it simple. Live honestly."
Later, I heard Dillon had left his post at the company. People spoke in whispers; some said his mother had a hard time. But I did not look back. I had the recording, the durian rind, and my ticket home to the person I wanted to become.
"Love yourself," I said into the winter air, as the plane crossed clouds.
That was my new beginning—quiet, clear, and mine.
The End
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