Distance

The day she signed the divorce papers, the sky was clear. Loan sat before the court official, listening as they read out familiar information about the couple, their nearly five-year-old child, and the apartment that would be left to her and their child. When it was her turn to sign, she picked up the pen quite quickly. Only after putting the pen down did Loan realize her hand wasn't shaking as she had imagined.

On the way home, she stopped by the kindergarten to pick up her son. As soon as he saw her, the little boy ran out, clutching the toy car Minh had bought him the previous weekend. He looked up and asked, "Is Dad picking me up today, Mom?" Loan bent down to adjust his collar, telling him that his father was busy today and would come at the weekend. The boy mumbled "yes" and ran off, completely unaware that from that day on, his parents would officially be living in two different places.

Loan met Minh when she was twenty-seven and he was twenty-nine. They met through a colleague. At that time, Minh had broken up with Thuong about six months earlier. Loan knew about it from the start. Minh had been in love with Thuong for almost eight years, since their student days. That relationship ended when Thuong moved to the South for work, while Minh stayed behind, each choosing a different path for their future.

Loan once thought six months was too short to start a new relationship after eight years of dating. She once asked Minh, "Have you forgotten her yet?" Minh was silent for a moment, then said, "I think I will." Loan didn't ask any further questions and stayed with him. Minh wasn't the kind of man who would make Loan's heart flutter at first sight. He simply made her feel comfortable. He lived a decent life, had a stable job, and treated her well. His parents liked her. When Loan was tired, he would take her home. On rainy days, he would wait for her outside the company with an umbrella. After more than a year of dating, they got married.

Minh's parents gave the couple an apartment. A few years later, they bought a small car. Then Loan gave birth to a child. Their life was unremarkable. Minh went to work and picked up his child whenever he could in the evenings. On weekends, the whole family would go out to eat, visit grandparents, or take the little boy to the park. Some evenings, the two of them would sit together watching a movie, the little boy falling asleep between them. Loan used to think that perhaps happiness was simply the days when nothing happened. She didn't know that later, those ordinary days would be the hardest thing for her to let go of.

One evening, Loan borrowed Minh's computer to send a document to a colleague. While searching for a file, she noticed a folder of photos synced from Google Photos. The folder had no name, only organized by time period. She randomly opened one, and the first photo that appeared was of Minh from many years ago. He looked younger and thinner than he does now, standing next to a girl. Loan recognized Thuong, even though she had never met her.

She scrolled down and saw many photos. The two of them standing next to each other in a restaurant, sitting in a car, photos from their birthdays, photos from their travels. Some photos were unremarkable: Thuong sleeping with her head on Minh's shoulder, Minh holding a camera in front of the sea, the two of them sitting under an awning to avoid the rain. One photo made Loan pause for a long time. Thuong was sitting on the floor, her hair tied up, smiling at the photographer. Behind her was a small room with a wooden table, a bookshelf, and a potted plant by the window. Loan didn't know where that room was. She only knew she had never seen Minh smile like that in a photograph before.

Loan sat in front of the screen for a long time. What hurt her wasn't the photos of her ex. She understood that everyone has a past. What bothered her was the sheer number of them. Hundreds of photos, while her family photos only numbered a few dozen. She scrolled on, watching Minh and Thuong's years unfold little by little, full and continuous, as if they had once shared a complete life, a life that Loan only now realized she had never truly known.

That evening, Minh came home late. As he changed his shoes, he asked, "Is the child asleep yet?" Loan replied, "Yes." He went inside and asked, "Have you eaten yet?" Loan said, "No." Minh looked at her for a moment and then asked, "Why?" Loan turned the computer screen towards him and asked, "Why do you still keep these photos?" Minh stood still for a moment, then pulled up a chair and sat down. He looked at the photos, then at Loan and explained, "I forgot. The old data automatically synced. I didn't think you'd see them."

Minh sat in front of the computer, deleting folders one by one. "I'm sorry," he said. Loan watched his hands move across the keyboard and asked, "Do you still remember her?" Minh paused for a moment: "That was a long time ago." Loan looked at him: "I'm asking if you still remember her." Minh didn't answer immediately. After a while, he said, "No." Loan turned away. Minh deleted the last folder and closed the computer. He looked at her and said, "This is my family."

That night, Minh held her before bed. Loan lay still in his arms, her eyes open, staring at the ceiling, and told herself she should trust her husband. You can't force someone to erase their past just because they've started a new marriage. But from that day on, Loan began noticing things she'd never noticed before. Minh's Facebook almost completely lacked wedding photos, pictures of the two of them, or family trips, while old posts about Thuong were still there, just set to private. Loan once asked, "Why don't you post pictures of me and our child?" Minh was playing with their child, didn't look up, and just smiled, saying, "I don't like putting family matters online." The answer sounded reasonable. Loan had thought it was reasonable too. But after those photos, she could no longer easily overlook the little things.

About two years later, Loan discovered that Minh and Thuong had reconnected. It wasn't Thuong who contacted Minh; Minh was the one who initiated contact. Initially, it was just a few messages asking about work and old friends. Later, the questions became more personal: "Have you eaten?", "Are you still having stomach pains?", "Don't drink too much coffee," "Remember to wear an extra layer in this cold weather." Loan felt a lump in her throat reading those messages. She had also suffered from stomach pains, had skipped meals for work, and had taken her children to school early in the morning on cold days. But Minh had never asked her those kinds of questions before.

One evening, while Minh was taking a shower, his phone lit up on the table. Loan hadn't intended to look at it, but a text message on the screen made her stop. She picked up the phone and read it. The message Minh sent to Thuong contained only one sentence: "I thought getting married would make me forget about you."

Loan sat down on the edge of the bed. From the living room, the sound of her son watching cartoons drifted in, occasionally bursting into laughter. In the bathroom, the sound of running water continued. Loan looked at the phone in her hand and suddenly felt that the house she had lived in for almost five years had become unfamiliar.

That night, after their child had fallen asleep, Loan asked Minh, "You still love Thuong, don't you?" Minh sat opposite her. He remained silent for a long time. That silence was clearer to Loan than any answer. Finally, he said, "I don't know what to call it." Loan looked at him, "But you still think about her." Minh lowered his head, "Yes." Loan asked, "Then why did you marry me?" Minh looked up, his face weary, "I thought I could start over. I thought that getting married, having children, having another family, everything would naturally fall apart."

Loan looked at him: "And it didn't go away?" Minh shook his head: "I was wrong." Loan sat for a long time before asking: "If you want to keep this family together, can you cut off all contact with her?" Minh nodded: "I won't contact her anymore."

Minh kept his word. He cut off contact with Thuong, no more messages, no more calls, whether Loan knew about them or not. But from that day on, Loan could never go back to how things were before. Every time Minh picked up his phone, she wondered who he was talking to. Every time he came home late, she remembered the old messages.

They lived together for almost two more years. They still ate together, still took their children to school, still visited each other's parents, and still took family photos. From the outside, it probably still looked like a normal family. Only Loan and Minh knew that a distance had grown between them that neither of them could find a way to bridge.

One evening, Minh sat at the dining table, watching Loan fold clothes for their child, and said, "Maybe we should end this." Loan put down the shirt but didn't ask why. Minh said that he had tried, that he still wanted to be a good father, still loved their child, and didn't blame her for anything. He just didn't want to continue a marriage that they both knew was no longer intact. Loan looked at him for a moment and then asked, "Have you seen her again?" Minh replied, "No." She asked again, "What about later?" Minh didn't answer. Loan didn't ask any more questions.

They divorced earlier this year, when their son was almost five years old. Minh left the apartment to her and their son, still providing full financial support and picking him up on weekends. Loan doesn't know if Minh has gotten back together with his ex, only that Thuong is still single. Strangely, she didn't cry as much after signing the divorce papers as she had expected. Perhaps she had cried all her tears during the years she tried to hold onto someone whose heart never truly belonged to her.

Loan still loves Minh, and sometimes even misses the days when the three of them were happy together like a family. But she also began to understand that she might lose someone in Minh's memory, but she couldn't lose her own life because of it.