March 15th, 2024.

Galang, Singapore.

The hostile worker making his morning rounds had no idea he was about to stumble upon a death that would expose the invisible violence of power, class, and the dangerous mathematics of forbidden love.

What he found in room 347 would shatter the carefully constructed silence around one of Singapore’s wealthiest families and reveal that some women are born to be erased, even in death.

Kumar Singh had been cleaning rooms at the budget rest hostel for 6 years.

He’d seen everything.

Backpackers who trashed rooms and disappeared without paying.

Drug deals conducted in whispers through paper thin walls.

Sex workers bringing clients to hourly rentals.

construction workers sleeping four to a room meant for two, sending every dollar home to families in Bangladesh and Myanmar.

But he’d never seen anything like room 347.

He knocked first, always knocked first, even though checkout was at 11:00 and it was barely 8:00 in the morning.

No answer.

He knocked again, called out in his accented English.

Housekeeping? Anyone inside? Still nothing.

The room had been paid through the week, but Kumar had learned to check anyway.

Sometimes people left early.

Sometimes they couldn’t pay and snuck out.

Sometimes they died.

He used his master key.

The door swung open on hinges that needed oil.

The smell hit him first.

Not decay, not yet, but something chemical.

Sweet and wrong.

The kind of smell that made your brain register danger before your conscious mind understood why.

The room was 8 ft by 10, barely larger than a prison cell.

A single mattress on a metal frame pushed against the wall.

One window overlooking the narrow alley where stray cats fought over discarded chicken bones from the hawker stalls.

The morning light filtered through the dirty glass, casting everything in gray.

Ana Tuba lay on her back, hands folded carefully over her stomach.

She wore a clean white blouse buttoned to the collar and dark jeans.

Her hair was brushed and pulled back into a neat ponytail.

Her face was peaceful, eyes closed, lips slightly parted as if she’d simply decided to stop existing, and her body had cooperated without protest.

Three empty pill bottles stood in a perfect line on the plastic nightstand.

Sleeping pills.

Kumar could read the labels, the kind you could buy from any pharmacy if you visited three different ones and paid cash so nobody asked questions.

Next to them, a folded piece of paper covered in neat handwriting.

Kumar couldn’t read.

letters that curved and looped in ways English never did.

Kumar backed out slowly, his heart hammering.

He’d found bodies before.

Old men who drank themselves to death.

Once a young Chinese guy who’d hanged himself with a bed sheet.

But this felt different.

Too quiet, too arranged, like a photograph someone had staged.

He called the police from the front desk, his hands shaking as he dialed.

The operator asked questions he could barely answer.

Yes, she’s dead.

No, I didn’t touch anything.

No, I don’t know her name.

Room 3:47.

Please hurry.

Inspector Chun Mingling arrived within 12 minutes, which meant someone had decided this mattered.

22 years investigating deaths in Singapore had taught Chun to read a scene the way some people read faces.

The position of the body, the cleanliness of the room, the objects left behind.

Everything told a story if you knew how to listen.

This one troubled her immediately.

Chun was 48, compact and efficient with short graying hair and eyes that missed nothing.

She’d risen through the ranks in a department that didn’t always welcome women, especially women who asked uncomfortable questions.

She’d learned to trust her instincts, even when they contradicted what everyone else wanted to believe.

She stood in the doorway of room 347 for a full minute before entering, just looking, taking it in.

The positioning was too deliberate, the room too clean.

Suicides were usually messy, frantic, lastminute decisions made in the chaos of despair.

Pills spilled on the floor, bottles thrown aside, notes scrolled in shaking handwriting.

This felt planned, methodical, like the woman had been preparing for this moment for weeks, making sure everything was perfect for when they found her.

Chun pulled on latex gloves and knelt beside the body.

Late 20s, Filipino based on the features.

Small, maybe 5’2, thin, but not malnourished.

Hands that showed the rough skin of someone who cleaned for a living.

No defensive wounds, no signs of struggle, body temperature, and rigor.

Mortise suggested she’d been dead between 8 and 12 hours.

The paramedics arrived, but Chun waved them back.

Give me a few minutes.

She found the passport in the small suitcase.

Ana Marie Taguba, born June 3rd, 1994, Davo City, Philippines.

Occupation listed as domestic worker.

Employer address listed as 47 Ocean Drive, Sentosa Cove, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Singapore, where houses started at 5 million and went up from there.

The suitcase told its own story, and Chun read it carefully.

Neatly packed.

Three changes of clothes, all modest cotton blouses, dark pants, one simple dress.

Everything folded with the precision of someone who’d learned to keep her possessions organized in small spaces.

A rosary wrapped in tissue paper.

The beads worn smooth from use.

A plane ticket to Manila dated for March 20th, 5 days away.

A resignation letter professionally written on letterhead from some employment agency, signed and stamped with official seals.

Everything arranged for a departure that would never happen.

But it was the other items that made Chen’s instincts flare.

For hardcover books, all in English.

Heavy literature, not popular fiction.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Pla.

A Little Life by Ha Yanagiara.

The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood.

Norwegian Wood by Herooqi Murakami.

Each inscribed on the inside cover in the same masculine handwriting, dark ink on cream paper.

to Sophia with love.

Dad Chun photographed each inscription.

Why did a domestic worker have books meant for someone else’s daughter? Had they been given to her, stolen, left behind? Each possibility opened different doors.

She found the pregnancy test hidden in the suitcase lining, tucked between the fabric and the hard shell.

Positive.

Two lines, unmistakable, the plastic stick still in its wrapper.

Chun felt her stomach tighten.

This changed everything.

A pregnant foreign worker found dead in a cheap hostel carrying books that didn’t belong to her and a resignation letter that felt rehearsed.

The phone was old.

A Nokia that probably cost $30 new, the kind you bought at a convenience store when you couldn’t afford anything better.

No smartphone, no social media presence, just basic texts and calls.

The recent call log had been deleted, but the phone company could recover those.

Chun bagged it carefully, labeled it, handed it to the forensics team.

The note on the nightstand was written in Tagalog.

Chun recognized the script but couldn’t read it.

Neat handwriting, careful letters like someone writing a final exam they wanted to pass.

She photographed it from multiple angles, then called Maria Santos, the Filipino liazison officer who handled most domestic worker cases.

Maria arrived within the hour.

She was 52, had been in Singapore for 30 years, and had seen enough dead Filipinos to have stopped crying about it a decade ago.

But she still felt each one, still carried them home in her thoughts.

She read the note slowly, her lips moving.

When she finished, she looked at Chun with something between pity and anger and a bone deep weariness.

It’s addressed to someone, a man.

She doesn’t use his name.

Maria’s voice was tight, controlled.

She says, “I thought love could save me, but I forgot.

I was never supposed to be loved.

Only used.

” Chin waited.

“There was more.

There was always more.

” “The second part,” Maria continued.

She writes, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was carrying your child.

” Maria’s hand trembled slightly as she held the paper.

Then at the bottom, smaller letters, she says, “Maybe in another life I was born whole.

Maybe in another life I was worth staying for.

” The room fell silent except for the sounds of traffic outside and the crime scene photographers’s camera clicking.

Chun looked at the young woman on the bed, hands still folded over her stomach, over the baby that would never be born.

She knew she was pregnant when she did this, Chun said quietly.

She killed them both, Maria replied.

Herself and the baby.

That’s a mortal sin in our faith.

She must have been desperate.

Chun looked at the address on the resignation letter.

Sentosa Cove.

She looked at the books inscribed to Sophia.

She looked at the pregnancy test.

A pattern was forming and it was ugly.

A domestic worker, a wealthy family, a daughter’s books, pregnancy, a suicide.

Who’s Sophia? Chin asked.

Maria shook her head.

I don’t know, but I think we need to find out.

Within 6 hours, the story leaked.

It always did.

Some cop looking for extra money.

Some hospital workers selling information to journalists.

Social media exploded first.

Twitter, Facebook, Tik Tok.

Grainy photos of the hostel.

Screenshots of Ana’s passport photo.

#justice for Anana began trending before Chun had even left the crime scene.

Cable news picked it up by evening.

The narrative wrote itself.

Fast and furious.

Pregnant Filipina maid, wealthy employer, forbidden affair, suicide in a gayang hostel.

The story had everything.

Class warfare, race, sex, tragedy.

The anchors discussed it with concerned faces and carefully neutral language.

But the subtext was clear.

Some rich man had used this poor woman and thrown her away.

The Filipino embassy issued a statement demanding a full investigation.

Migrant worker advocacy groups organized protests outside the manpower ministry.

Hundreds of domestic workers gathered, holding candles and photos of Anya they downloaded from the internet.

Everyone wanted someone to blame.

Everyone wanted justice.

But Chun had been doing this long enough to know that justice and truth were rarely the same thing.

The media wanted a villain.

They’d probably get one.

But whether it was the right one, that was another question entirely.

She drove to Sentosa Cove as the sun set over the marina, the sky turning orange and pink over the expensive boats.

The GPS guided her through streets lined with mansions, each more ostentatious than the last.

The Lee residence was a three-story minimalist fortress, all glass and clean lines and expensive taste.

The kind of house where people lived separate lives under the same roof, where secrets could hide in plain sight behind money and good manners, and the assumption that wealthy people didn’t do terrible things.

Chun rang the doorbell.

A woman answered immediately, as if she’d been waiting.

mid-50s, impeccably dressed in cream linen that probably cost more than Chen’s monthly salary.

Silver hair cut in a precise bob.

Her face showed the perfect amount of concern.

Not too much, not too little.

Practiced the face of someone who’d learned to control every expression.

Mrs.

Lee, yes.

Is this about Anya? Her voice was measured careful.

She already knew.

Of course, she knew.

The news was everywhere.

May I come in? Mrs.

Lee stepped aside without hesitation.

The interior was exactly what Chen expected.

Abstract art on every wall, each piece probably worth six figures.

Furniture that looked uncomfortable but expensive.

White marble floors that showed every speck of dirt.

And silence, the particular silence of houses where people were very, very careful about what they said.

Chun sat across from Mrs.

Lee in a living room that felt like a museum gallery.

Everything looked curated, chosen, displayed.

Nothing felt lived in.

When did Anya leave your employment? 3 days ago, March 12th.

She resigned voluntarily.

Mrs.

Lee’s hands were folded in her lap perfectly still.

We were sorry to see her go.

She was an excellent worker.

Did you know she was pregnant? Mrs.

Lee’s expression didn’t change.

Not surprised, not shock, just a slight tightening around the eyes.

Barely noticeable.

No, I did not.

Did you know she was having a relationship with someone? Inspector, I run an art foundation.

I’m not home most days.

What Anna did on her personal time was not my concern.

The words were polite, but there was steel underneath.

A warning.

Don’t push.

Where is your husband, Mrs.

Lee? Pause.

Half a second too long.

Mrs.

Lee’s eyes flickered toward the staircase before returning to Chun.

He’s resting.

He hasn’t been well recently.

I’ll need to speak with him, of course, but perhaps tomorrow would be better.

He takes medication that makes him confused in the evenings.

Chun made a note in her pad.

People who wanted to delay conversations usually had a reason.

Mrs.

Lee, Anna left a note.

In it, she refers to someone, a man.

She says she was carrying his child.

Mrs.

Lee folded her hands in her lap.

Everything about her posture said control.

Perfect posture, perfect stillness, perfect composure.

I’m sure I don’t know anything about that.

Perhaps she had a boyfriend.

These girls often do.

These girls, Chun noted the phrase, the distancing, the dismissal, the books in her suitcase, Chun continued.

They were inscribed to someone named Sophia.

Something flickered across Mrs.

Lee’s face.

Pain quickly masked.

Sophia was our daughter.

She passed away 2 years ago.

I’m sorry for your loss.

How did the books end up with Anna? I gave them to her.

Sophia loved reading.

After she died, I couldn’t bear to see them sitting on shelves collecting dust.

Anna enjoyed reading as well.

It seemed appropriate.

The explanation was smooth.

Too smooth.

Like she’d prepared it.

What did Sophia die from? Mrs.

Lee’s jaw tightened.

Suicide.

She jumped from her dormatory window at Columbia University.

She was 24.

I’m very sorry.

Yes.

Well, it was a difficult time.

Mrs.

Lee stood the interview clearly over in her mind.

If there’s nothing else, inspector, I have calls to make.

Anna’s family will need to be notified.

We’ve already contacted them, but I will need to speak with your husband tomorrow.

Of course.

Shall we say 10:00? Chun stood.

10:00.

As Mrs.

Lee walked her to the door, Chun noticed a photograph in the hallway.

A young woman, beautiful, confident, wearing a Columbia University graduation cap.

Fresh flowers in a crystal vase beneath it.

Sophia Chun asked.

Yes, she was lovely.

Mrs.

Lee’s face remained perfectly composed.

She was everything.

The door closed behind Chun with a soft, expensive click.

She sat in her car for a moment before starting the engine, watching the lights come on in the mansion.

She’d seen enough.

A vulnerable worker, a wealthy family, a dead daughter, pregnancy, a suicide, and somewhere in that perfect house, the truth was waiting behind locked doors and practiced lies.

Tomorrow she would find it.

Tonight, Ana Tuba was on a metal table in the morg, her body being examined by strangers.

The baby that died with her had no name and no father willing to claim her.

Just another invisible woman.

Just another forgotten story.

Except Chun wouldn’t let her be forgotten.

Not yet.

To understand how Ana Tuba ended up dead in a Gailang hostel with her hands folded over a baby that would never be born.

You have to go back.

Not just months, but years.

Back to Davo City where the heat sits heavy even in the mornings and poverty is a patient, brutal teacher that never lets you forget your lessons.

Ana was born on June 3rd, 1994 in a house made of concrete blocks and corrugated tin in Bangi Matina where the streets flooded when it rained and the power went out more often than it stayed on.

The house had three rooms for six people, no air conditioning, no hot water, a television that worked when her father remembered to pay the electric bill.

Her mother, Teresa, washed other people’s clothes for money.

40 pesos per load, bent over a washboard in the yard while her hands cracked and bled.

Her father, Eduardo, worked construction when he could stay sober long enough to keep a job, which wasn’t often.

There were three younger siblings who needed food and school fees and medicine and shoes that fit.

The math was simple and unforgiving.

The family needed money.

Anna was the eldest, and eldest daughters and families like hers learned early that their dreams came last, if they came at all.

But Anna had one escape that poverty couldn’t take from her.

Books she read everything she could find.

English novels borrowed from the public library.

Newspapers left behind at the market.

Textbooks her teachers let her take home.

She taught herself English by reading Jane Austin and Gabriel Garcia Marquez and whatever else she could get her hands on.

By the time she was 14, she spoke English better than most of her teachers, her accent almost unplaceable.

Her mother noticed.

You’re smart, Anic.

Maybe you can work abroad in Singapore or Dubai.

Send money home.

Give your brothers and sister a better chance.

It wasn’t a suggestion.

It was a plan.

Anna’s intelligence wasn’t for Anna.

It was a resource to be used for the family’s survival.

Her father noticed, too, but in a different way.

He had a brother, Uncle Ramon, who visited when Anna’s mother worked night shifts at the 24-hour laundromat.

Ramon brought beer and cigarettes and money for the family.

money Eduardo needed to pay gambling debts.

Money that came with strings attached.

Ramon also brought hands that wandered.

Words whispered in hallways when no one else was listening.

Promises that if Anna told anyone, the money would stop.

The family would suffer.

Her father would lose his brother’s help.

It would be her fault.

Anna learned to be invisible.

She learned to move through rooms like a ghost, making herself small, taking up no space.

She learned that being quiet kept you safe and being seen brought danger.

She stopped talking to her classmates.

She stopped raising her hand in class even when she knew the answer.

She stopped looking people in the eye.

When she was 15, she told the priest during confession.

Father Reyes listened from behind the screen, his voice patient and tired.

Have you been tempting him? Girls your age must be careful.

You’re developing.

Men notice.

You must dress modestly.

Pray for purity.

Pray for strength against temptation.

Anya never told anyone again.

She learned what the world had been teaching her all along.

That what happened to her was somehow her fault.

That her body was a problem to be managed.

That silence was survival.

At 19, she applied to the Singapore domestic worker program.

The recruitment agency had a booth at the high school job fair.

Smiling women in neat uniforms showing photos of Singapore skyline.

Marina Bay Sands, gardens that looked like paradise.

They promised good salaries, professional families, opportunities to save money and build a future.

Her mother was relieved.

One less mouth to feed, and Anna would send money home.

Her father was furious.

He’d been planning to marry her off to a friend’s son, a man twice Ana’s age, who owned a tricycle taxi service.

The man would have paid a dowy, 5,000 pesos, enough to cover Eduardo’s debts and buy a new television.

But Anna didn’t care what her father wanted anymore.

She’d stopped caring the night she’d found him passed out drunk while Ramon was in her room.

For the first time in her life, she was choosing something.

Not freedom exactly, but distance.

And distance felt like mercy.

The Universal Caregivers Training Institute in Manila was where Filipino women went to learn how to serve.

6 weeks of cooking Chinese food and Malaysian food and Indian food.

cleaning to Singaporean standards, which meant clean enough to eat off floors, taking care of children who weren’t theirs, staying invisible, staying grateful, staying quiet.

The dormatory was a converted warehouse, 40 beds in one room.

The walls were covered in motivational posters and warnings.

A good helper is a quiet helper.

Your employer is always right.

Send money home.

Make your family proud.

Mrs.

Reyes, the head trainer, gave the same speech to every new batch of girls.

She’d been doing this for 15 years, and her voice had the flat quality of someone reciting scripture they’d long stopped believing.

You are not their family.

You are not their friends.

You are their helpers.

You clean their homes, cook their food, take care of their children, and stay in your place.

If you’re smart, you save your money and go home in 2 years with enough to start a small business.

If you’re stupid, you get pregnant or run away or steal.

and you end up in jail or deported or worse.

The choice is yours.

” Anna shared a bunk room with 12 other women.

Most were sending money back to children or elderly parents or husbands who couldn’t find work.

They talked about going home, starting sorry stores, building houses, sending their own children to good schools.

They had plans.

They had hope.

Anya had none.

She wasn’t running toward anything.

She was running away from everything from Uncle Ramon and father Reyes and her father’s gambling and her mother’s resigned acceptance that this was just how life was for families like theirs.

Her bunkmate LSE noticed.

LSE was 32, sending money back to three children in Manila.

She’d been a teacher before economic necessity had turned her into a maid.

You never talk about your family, LSE observed one night.

Nothing to say.

You never talk about going home.

Not planning to, LSE watched Anna read at night under the dim overhead bulb, thick English novels with tiny print that most of the other women wouldn’t touch.

What are you looking for in those books? Anna looked up, surprised by the question.

No one had ever asked her that before.

She thought about it for a moment, then answered honestly.

Instructions on how to be human.

LSE didn’t understand, but she nodded anyway.

She’d learned that some pain was too big for explanations.

December 2022, Ana landed in Singapore at Changi Airport.

The agency sent her directly to the Lee residence.

The briefing was simple.

Retired professor and his wife.

No children at home, light housework, cooking, general assistants, educated people, reasonable employers.

The agency representative, a cheerful woman named Helen, said, “You’re lucky.

The Lees are good people.

Treat them well and they’ll treat you well.

” Nobody mentioned the daughter who’d killed herself 18 months earlier.

Nobody mentioned that Mr.

Lee hadn’t spoken more than 10 words at a time since his daughter’s death.

Nobody mentioned that Mrs.

Lee ran her household like a corporation with rules and protocols and expectations that were never explicitly stated, but always enforced.

The house in Sentosa Cove looked like something from the architecture magazines Anya had sometimes flipped through at bookstores.

glass walls, minimalist furniture, art that probably cost more than her entire village earned in a year.

Everything white and clean and cold.

Her room was in the back of the house, off the kitchen, 8x 10 ft, a single bed with clean white sheets, a small dresser, a window that looked out at the backyard.

It had air conditioning, actual air conditioning, luxury Anna wasn’t used to.

She stood in the middle of the room that first night and cried quietly because even this tiny space was more than she’d ever had.

Mrs.

Lee met her at the door that first day.

Everything about the woman was precise, her hair cut to exact specifications, her clothes wrinkle-free, her voice controlled and modulated.

She spoke the way wealthy people spoke to servants.

Polite but distant, kind but firm.

You’ll work Monday through Saturday, 7:00 a.

m.

to 9:00 p.

m.

Sundays, you may attend church, but I prefer you return by noon.

Do not enter my husband’s study without permission.

Do not enter our daughter’s room under any circumstances.

Do you understand? Yes, ma’am.

We value privacy and discretion above all else.

Can you be discreet, Anya? Yes, ma’am.

Mrs.

Lee’s smile was practiced professional.

Good.

I think we’ll get along well.

Mr.

Lee appeared that evening as Anna was preparing dinner.

She’d been given a list of his dietary preferences and restrictions.

No red meat, no dairy, lots of vegetables, simple preparations.

He was thin, too thin with gray hair that needed cutting and glasses he kept adjusting.

He looked at Anna the way you might look at furniture, acknowledging her presence.

Nothing more.

This is Anna, our new helper, Mrs.

Lee said, her voice bright and artificial.

He nodded once, mumbled something that might have been hello, and disappeared into his study.

Don’t take it personally, Mrs.

Lee said.

My husband is recovering from a difficult period.

He prefers solitude.

Anna didn’t ask what the difficult period was.

She’d learned not to ask questions.

The first month, Anna was a ghost in the Lee household.

She woke at 6:00 before the family stirred and prepared breakfast.

Coffee for Mrs.

Lee, exactly three minutes steeped.

Oatmeal with fruit for Mr.

Lee, no sugar.

She cleaned rooms they’d already left, erasing evidence of their presence.

She learned their patterns.

Mrs.

Lee left at 8 for her art foundation and returned late, sometimes after 9:00.

Mr.

Lee spent most days in his study or the library, surrounded by books.

The daughter’s room stayed locked, but Ana noticed Mr.

Lee standing outside it sometimes, usually late at night when he thought no one was watching.

Just standing there staring at the door like he was waiting for someone to open it from the inside, like he was waiting for his daughter to come back.

She noticed the photograph in the hallway on the second floor.

A young woman, mid20s, wearing a graduation cap and gown.

Colombia University written on a banner behind her.

beautiful, confident, smiling, alive.

Fresh flowers appeared beneath it every morning, placed in a crystal vase.

Mr.

Lee’s doing, Anna watched him do it once, his hands shaking as he arranged the stems.

One afternoon in early January, Anna made a mistake.

She was cleaning the second floor, working through her checklist the way she’d been trained.

Vacuum hallway, dust banister, clean bathroom.

She opened what she thought was the linen closet.

It was the daughter’s room.

The door swung open and Anna found herself looking into a space frozen in time.

Textbooks still on the desk, spines uncracked, clothes hanging in the closet, tags still attached, the bed unmade, as if someone had just gotten up and would return any moment.

A laptop on the nightstand, probably dead, probably full of final messages no one had been able to read.

What are you doing? Anna spun around.

Mrs.

Lee stood behind her, face perfectly calm, but eyes cold and hard.

Sorry, ma’am.

I didn’t mean.

I thought it was.

I thought I made myself clear.

Do not enter our daughter’s room.

Yes, ma’am.

I’m sorry.

It was an accident.

What you meant doesn’t matter, Anna.

What you do matters.

Actions have consequences.

Do you understand? Yes, ma’am.

Mrs.

Lee pulled the door closed, locked it with a key she kept on a chain around her neck.

Don’t make this mistake again.

No, ma’am.

The next day, the door had a new deadbolt installed.

Professional, expensive, permanent.

But something else changed that day, too.

Though Anna didn’t realize it yet.

Mr.

Lee started looking at her.

Not the way men usually looked at her.

Not like Uncle Ramon with hunger and entitlement, but with recognition like he saw something in her he understood.

Like he saw the same emptiness he carried.

A week later, she found a book on her pillow.

The bell jar by Sylvia Pla.

A single sentence was underlined in pencil, the mark careful and deliberate.

I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel.

Anya read the book that night, sitting on her small bed in her small room while the house settled into silence.

She read about depression and suicide and a woman who felt like she was suffocating under a bell jar, watching the world through curved glass.

She cried quietly in her small room where no one could hear.

Someone had seen her.

Really seen her.

The emptiness she carried.

The stillness that wasn’t peace but paralysis.

The feeling of watching life happened to other people while she remained trapped behind glass.

She didn’t know who had left the book.

She assumed Mrs.

Lee, a kind gesture from an employer who’d noticed her reading.

She didn’t know it yet, but that book was the first step toward her death.

Because being seen, she would learn, was the most dangerous thing of all.

And Mr.

Lee saw her now.

Really saw her.

And that recognition would bind them together in ways neither could escape.

In ways that would end with Anna’s hands folded over her pregnant stomach in a hostile room in Galang, choosing death over a life she’d never been meant to survive.

The books continued to appear like secret messages in a language only two people understood.

Anna would return to her room after finishing the evening dishes.

exhausted from 14 hours of cooking and cleaning and staying invisible.

And there it would be.

A new novel on her pillow, always with one sentence underlined.

A little life appeared in late January.

The underlined passage read, “Wasn’t friendship its own miracle? The finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely.

” In February, the edible woman, the marked sentence, I was being destroyed without realizing it by some kind of force.

I couldn’t even see.

Norwegian would in early March.

The line, “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

” Anya read them all.

She read them the way drowning people grasp at rope desperately, gratefully.

Each book felt like proof that someone saw her intellectual hunger, her need to understand the world through someone else’s words.

She began leaving the books on the kitchen counter when she finished them.

Her own silent response.

Thank you.

I understand.

I see you, too.

She still didn’t know for certain who was leaving them, but she suspected.

Mr.

Lee had started speaking to her in February.

Small exchanges at first.

This coffee is excellent.

Thank you.

Could you prepare the chicken the way you made it last week? Have you read much, Murakami? That last question had surprised her.

She’d been clearing his breakfast dishes when he asked it, his voice quiet, almost hesitant.

Yes, sir.

I like his writing.

The loneliness feels real.

Mr.

Lee looked at her then really looked at her and something passed between them.

Recognition, understanding, the acknowledgement that loneliness was something they both carried.

Mrs.

Lee noticed.

Of course, she noticed.

Mrs.

Lee noticed everything.

Anna would catch her watching from doorways.

Her face unreadable.

The workload increased.

More rooms to clean.

More elaborate meals to prepare.

instructions delivered in that clipped controlled voice that made everything sound reasonable even when it wasn’t.

Anna, I need you to reorganize the library alphabetically by author.

It should take a few days.

Anya, the guest rooms need deep cleaning.

I’m hosting a board meeting next week.

Anya, I’ve noticed you spending time in the library.

I prefer you focus on your duties during work hours.

The message was clear.

Stay in your place.

Don’t get comfortable.

Don’t forget what you are.

But the books kept coming.

The night everything changed was April 12th, a Thursday.

Singapore was experiencing unusual weather.

A tropical storm system that had meteorologists warning people to stay indoors.

Thunder rolled across the island like artillery fire.

Lightning turned the sky white every few seconds.

The power flickered twice during dinner, then went out completely at 8:30.

Mrs.

Lee was in Hong Kong for an art gala, a 3-day trip she’d mentioned at breakfast.

I trust you’ll take care of things while I’m away, she told Anna.

The words perfectly polite and somehow threatening.

The darkness was complete.

No street lights in Sentosa Cove worked without power.

No backup generator in this section of the house.

Anna fumbled for the flashlight Mrs.

Lee kept in the kitchen drawer, her heart pounding.

Darkness had always terrified her.

Darkness meant Uncle Ramon’s visits.

Darkness meant hands on her body and nowhere to run.

She tried to breathe slowly.

Tried to calm the panic rising in her chest.

It’s just a storm.

You’re safe.

You’re not in Davo anymore, but her body didn’t believe it.

Her hands shook as she lit the emergency candles.

Tears came without permission.

Silent and hot.

Are you hurt? Anya jumped.

Mr.

Lee stood in the kitchen doorway holding a flashlight.

In the dim light, he looked like a ghost.

Thin, pale, insubstantial.

No, sir.

I’m fine.

Just the storm.

But she wasn’t fine, and he could see it.

Her face was wet with tears she couldn’t control.

You’re afraid of the dark.

It wasn’t a question.

Anya nodded, unable to speak.

She felt stupid, childish.

A grown woman afraid of darkness.

Mr.

Lee moved to the kitchen table, sat down, gestured to the chair across from him.

Sit, please.

Anya hesitated.

Mrs.

Lee’s rules.

Don’t sit with the employers.

Don’t presume familiarity.

Stay in your place.

It’s all right, he said, his voice gentle.

My wife isn’t here, and I think we could both use the company.

Anya sat.

They didn’t speak at first, just sat in the candle light while the storm raged outside.

Then Anya forgetting herself, forgetting English, whispered in Tagalog, “Li Akong Nasactin, peromagling aong maggo.

I’m always hurt.

I just hide it well.

I don’t understand the words,” Mr.

Lee said quietly.

“But I understand the feeling.

” He reached across the table and took her hand.

Not seductively, not with any kind of intention beyond human connection.

Just holding her hand the way you might hold someone who was drowning.

Anya started crying harder.

No one had touched her with kindness in years.

Every touch had been transactional or violent or both.

This was different.

This was someone saying, “I see your pain, and I’m not afraid of it.

I wish I could have saved you, too,” he whispered.

Anya thought he meant save her from her pain, from her past, from whatever darkness made her cry in power outages.

She didn’t understand he was talking to his dead daughter.

that in this moment in the candle light with this broken woman crying across from him, he was seeing Sophia trying to reach back through time and hold his daughter’s hand before she jumped.

They talked for hours that night, about books and loneliness and the weight of living when part of you wanted to die.

Mr.

Lee told her about Sophia, the depression that had stalked her since high school, the isolation she’d felt at Colombia despite her success, the phone call he’d received from the university at 3:00 in the morning, the closed casket because of how she’d landed.

Anna told him about Davo carefully, leaving out the worst parts, the poverty, the feeling of being trapped, the escape to Singapore that hadn’t been an escape at all, just a different kind of cage.

Do you ever feel like you’re watching your life happen to someone else?” Mr.

Lee asked, like you’re just observing from behind glass everyday? Anya whispered.

Their heads were close now, leaning over the table.

His hands still held hers.

When the power came back at 4:00 in the morning, the sudden light made them both blink and pull apart, startled.

“Thank you,” Mr.

Lee said, “for staying with me tonight.

I will always stay,” Anya replied.

Neither of them specified what that meant.

Neither of them acknowledged that a line had been crossed, but something had shifted between them.

Something dangerous and inevitable.

The next evening, when Mrs.

Lee was still in Hong Kong, they had tea together after dinner.

The evening after that, they watched a film in his study.

In the mood for love, a film about two people whose spouses are having an affair, who find solace in each other, but never quite allow themselves to consummate their own connection.

Except Mr.

Lee and Anna weren’t that restrained.

It happened during the film in the dim light of his study with the door closed.

He was crying, watching the two characters maintain their dignity and distance.

Anna took his hand, the same gesture he’d offered her.

Then she was holding him.

Then he was kissing her forehead, then her cheek, then her lips.

What happened next was quiet and desperate and wrong in every possible way.

Anya’s journal entry that night, written in Tagalog, said only, “He held me like I was made of glass, like I mattered, like I was worth protecting.

” Mr.

Lee’s testimony later, given to Inspector Chan from a hospital bed, would describe it differently.

I don’t remember making a conscious decision.

I was grieving.

She was there.

I was selfish and weak, and I destroyed her.

For a week afterward, Mr.

Lee avoided Anya.

He took his meals in his study.

He left the house early for walks and returned late.

When they passed in hallways, he couldn’t meet her eyes.

Anna didn’t understand.

Had she done something wrong? Was she not enough? The rejection felt like every other rejection she’d experienced.

Another confirmation that she wasn’t worthy of being chosen.

She wrote him letters she didn’t send, pouring her confusion onto pages she kept hidden under her mattress.

Did I misunderstand? Was I just a ghost to you, too? When Mrs.

Lee returned from Hong Kong.

She looked at Anya differently, searching, calculating.

She started coming home earlier, watching the interactions between her husband and the maid.

She started asking questions.

Has my husband been eating well? Has he seemed upset? Has he mentioned anything unusual? Anya answered carefully, truthfully.

No, ma’am.

He seems quiet, ma’am.

Nothing unusual, ma’am.

But Mrs.

Lee knew something had changed.

She’d been married to the man for 30 years.

She knew when he was hiding something.

In August, when Mrs.

Lee was away at another art event, Mr.

Lee came to Anna.

She was in the kitchen preparing his dinner.

He stood in the doorway looking wrecked.

“Did I do something wrong?” Anya asked, her voice small.

“You did nothing wrong.

I did everything wrong.

” “But I can’t stop thinking about you.

” “Then don’t stop.

” It happened three more times over the next month.

Always when Mrs.

Lee was away, always initiated by Anna now because she’d convinced herself this was real, that he loved her, that she wasn’t just convenient.

In September, Anna made her fatal mistake.

She wrote him a letter in Tagalog, her first language, her true voice.

She told him she loved him, that she saw his soul, that she wasn’t his daughter, but she was here, and she wasn’t afraid of his silence.

She left it on his pillow at 11:30 p.

m.

while he was in the shower.

What she didn’t know was that Mrs.

Lee had returned early from Jakarta.

That Mrs.

Lee had been taking Tagalog lessons for 6 months, paranoid about servants gossiping.

That Mrs.

Lee would find the letter at 6:00 a.

m.

and read every word.

Mrs.

Lee didn’t scream.

She didn’t cry.

She didn’t confront her husband.

She simply began planning Anya’s removal efficiently, completely.

The way she handled everything in her life.

The invitation came at breakfast.

Mrs.

Lee, perfectly composed in ivory silk, sipping her coffee with studied casualness.

Anya, I’d like you to join me for dinner tonight.

7:00 set the table in the formal dining room.

Anna’s stomach dropped.

The formal dining room was never used.

It was for important guests for occasions that required ceremony.

Yes, ma’am.

Mr.

Lee looked up from his newspaper, confused.

What’s the occasion? Just a conversation I need to have.

Mrs.

Lee’s voice was light, pleasant.

Nothing that concerns you, darling.

All day, Anna’s hands shook as she prepared dinner.

Roasted chicken with herbs, garlic, potatoes, steamed vegetables, a meal Mrs.

Lee had specifically requested, she set the table with the good china, the silver, a single white orchid in a crystal vase.

At 7:00, she stood in the dining room doorway, uncertain.

Sit down, Anya.

Mrs.

Lee gestured to the chair across from her.

The table was set for two, not three.

Mr.

Lee was nowhere to be seen.

Anna sat, her heart hammering.

Mrs.

Lee began pleasantly cutting her chicken into precise pieces.

You’ve been with us 9 months now.

Yes, ma’am.

You’re a good worker.

Very attentive.

The word hung in the air, waited with meaning.

Very observant.

Anya couldn’t eat, couldn’t breathe.

Mrs.

Lee reached into her purse and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

Anya’s letter, the one she’d left on Mr.

Lee’s pillow.

You left this on my husband’s pillow.

Mrs.

Lee placed it on the table between them.

I read to Galog.

I don’t advertise it, but I find it useful.

The room tilted.

Anya gripped the edge of the table.

Let me be clear.

Mrs.

Lee’s voice remained perfectly controlled.

I’m not angry.

I’m not even surprised.

My husband is weak.

He has been since Sophia died.

And you saw an opportunity.

No, ma’am.

I didn’t.

I love Don’t.

Mrs.

Lee’s voice cut like a blade.

Don’t insult me with that word.

You love security.

You love not being in Manila.

You love the fantasy of being special.

Mrs.

Lee produced an envelope.

Inside, Anna could see papers, official looking documents.

Return ticket to Manila.

Three days from now.

resignation letter.

Sign it.

3 month severance, $5,000 Singapore dollars and a non-disclosure agreement.

You sign this, you pack your things, you leave Friday, and you never contact my husband again.

You never speak of what happened here.

Anya stared at the money more than she’d save in 2 years.

Enough to change her family’s life.

You don’t have a choice, Anna.

If you refuse, I’ll have you deported.

No severance, no reference.

You’ll be blacklisted.

You’ll never work overseas again.

Your family will know why.

The threat was delivered calmly like she was discussing the weather.

Anna’s hands shook as she signed the resignation letter.

The NDA, all of it.

Good girl.

Mrs.

Lee smiled.

You made the right choice.

What Anna didn’t say, couldn’t say, was, “I’m pregnant.

” She’d known for 3 weeks.

The test was hidden in her room.

Two pink lines that had made her simultaneously terrified and hopeful.

hopeful because maybe if Mr.

Lee knew, he’d choose her.

Maybe the baby would make their connection real undeniable.

She’d been waiting for the right moment to tell him, but the right moment never came.

That night, alone in her room, Ana took out her phone.

The old Nokia Mrs.

Lee allowed her to have for emergencies.

She texted Mr.

Lee’s number, the one she’d found written on a paper in his study.

I need to talk to you.

It’s important.

2 hours later, he responded.

I think it’s best we don’t communicate.

My wife told me you’re leaving.

I’m sorry for everything.

Anna’s fingers trembled as she typed.

I’m pregnant.

The message showed delivered.

Then read.

She waited.

No response.

30 minutes later, she checked again.

The message was gone.

Deleted.

He deleted it from his phone.

He knew.

And he’d chosen silence.

Anna sat on her bed staring at her suitcase.

She couldn’t go back to Davo, pregnant and unmarried.

The shame would destroy her mother.

The church would condemn her.

Her father would beat her or worse.

She couldn’t stay in Singapore.

No legal status without employment.

No money for an abortion, which was expensive here and illegal in the Philippines.

Catholic guilt crushing her every time she considered it.

She couldn’t keep the baby alone.

How would she survive? Where would she live? Every option was impossible.

The next morning, she packed her small suitcase, three changes of clothes, the books Mr.

Lee had given her, the letter he’d never read, her rosary, the pregnancy test wrapped in tissue paper.

She left the jade pendant on his desk with a note.

Return this to Sophia.

Mrs.

Lee drove her to the MRT station herself.

Efficient, final.

I hope you find happiness, Anna.

The words were empty, prefuncter.

Anya took her suitcase and walked into the station.

She didn’t go to the airport.

She went to Galang where rooms were cheap and nobody asked questions.

The budget rest hostel cost $45 a night.

Her severance would last a month if she was careful.

Room 347 was 8x 10 ft, a mattress, a window, enough space to disappear.

For 3 days, Anna walked.

She went to Little India and watched family shop for spices and bright fabrics.

She sat in Merllion Park and watched tourists take photos, smiling, happy, loved.

She attended mass at the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd and tried to confess.

The priest, an older man with kind eyes, listened.

Then he said, “God forgives, child, but you must face the consequences of your sin.

” Your sin as if loving someone was the sin.

As if being used was her fault.

On the third day, September 22nd, Ana woke up and knew she couldn’t survive this.

The baby growing inside her felt like an anchor pulling her into dark water.

Every breath was drowning.

She bought three bottles of sleeping pills from three differentarmacies.

She arranged her room carefully.

She wrote three letters.

One to her mother with the severance money.

Lies about a good job promises she was fine.

One to Mr.

Lee, the note they would find in her pocket.

one to the baby she would never meet, apologizing for being too broken to save them both.

At 3:00 in the afternoon, Anna took the pills one bottle at a time, methodical, certain, she lay down on the bed, folded her hands over her stomach, over the baby, and closed her eyes.

Her last thought written in her journal that morning, maybe in another life, I was born whole.

Maybe in another life I was worth staying for.

By evening, Ana Tuba was gone, and nobody who could have saved her had tried.

Inspector Chun Mingling had learned over 22 years that the truth rarely announced itself with clarity or conviction.

It hid in deleted text messages and rehearsed statements and the careful spaces between what people said and what they meant.

The Ana Tuba case was full of those spaces, gaps wide enough to hide a dead woman and her unborn child.

The digital forensics team recovered the deleted messages from Ana’s Nokia phone within 48 hours.

The technology was old, almost laughably primitive by modern standards, which made the data easy to extract.

What they found painted a picture that made Chen’s jaw tighten and her hands curl into fists on her desk.

September 19th, 11:47 p.

m.

Anya to unknown number, I need to talk to you.

It’s important.

September 20th, 1:52 a.

m.

Unknown number to Anya.

I think it’s best we don’t communicate.

My wife told me you’re leaving.

I’m sorry for everything.

September 20th, 2003 a.

m.

Anya to unknown number.

I’m pregnant.

Message delivered.

Message read at 2:09 a.

m.

6 minutes of someone staring at their phone, deciding what kind of person they wanted to be.

They chose silence.

No response, just deletion.

The phone records showed the unknown number had been purchased on August 15th from a 7-Eleven in Orchard Road.

Cash transaction, no name attached, no identification required for a prepaid SIM card.

But cell tower data told its own story.

That phone had ping towers near the Lee residence 93% of the time over the past 3 months.

The other 7% it showed up near Columbia University’s Singapore campus where Mr.

Lee occasionally gave guest lectures on comparative literature.

A burner phone used by a retired literature professor who should have no need for untraceable communication.

Used by a man who knew he was doing something that required hiding.

Chun made an appointment to return to the Lee household.

October 1st, 10 days after Anya’s body was discovered.

Long enough for the initial shock to wear off.

Long enough for people to get comfortable with whatever story they decided to tell.

The mansion looked the same.

Glass and angles and money, but something felt different.

The flowers beneath Sophia’s photograph had wilted, not replaced.

The house felt empty even though people were inside it.

Mrs.

Lee answered the door herself.

No maid to replace Anna yet.

Or maybe never again.

Maybe the scandal was too fresh, the memory too recent.

She wore black, which might have been mourning or might have been her usual aesthetic.

With women like Mrs.

Lee, it was impossible to tell.

Inspector Chin, please come in.

Mr.

Lee sat in the formal living room, and Chun barely recognized him.

He’d lost weight he couldn’t afford to lose.

His clothes hung off him like they belonged to someone else.

Unshaven, holloweyed, hands trembling as he held a cup of tea he didn’t drink.

The cup rattled against the saucer every few seconds, a metronome of guilt.

Mrs.

Lee sat beside him, spine straight, face composed.

Her lawyer, Patricia Co, sat to her left, sharpeyed, expensive suit, the kind of lawyer who charged $1,000 an hour and was worth every penny.

She’d already called Chun twice to make it clear this was a courtesy interview.

Her clients were cooperating voluntarily.

They could end this conversation whenever they wished.

Chun sat across from them, pulled out her notebook, old school.

She preferred writing by hand.

It made people less nervous than typing on a laptop.

And nervous people said things they didn’t mean to say.

Mr.

Lee, when did you last see Ana Tuba? The morning of September 12th at breakfast.

His voice was barely audible, like speaking required more energy than he possessed.

She made oatmeal with blueberries.

She knew I liked blueberries.

The detail felt important to him.

Chun wrote it down.

Did you speak to her that day? I said good morning.

She asked if I wanted more coffee.

I said, “No, thank you.

” He paused.

That was all.

I didn’t know it would be the last time I’d see her.

Did you know she was leaving your employment? Mr.

Lee glanced at his wife.

A quick flicker of eye contact before looking away.

My wife told me that evening after dinner, she said Ana had resigned, that she wanted to return to the Philippines.

I was surprised.

She seemed happy here.

Did she seem happy to you, Mr.

Lee? He closed his eyes.

When he opened them, they were wet.

I don’t know.

I don’t pay attention to anything anymore.

Not since Sophia.

I barely notice when people come or go.

My wife handles everything.

Chun placed a photograph on the coffee table.

The pregnancy test found in Ana’s suitcase.

Two pink lines stark against white plastic.

Did you know Anna was pregnant? The color drained from Mr.

Lee’s face so quickly, Chun thought he might faint.

His cup rattled harder against the saucer.

Te slopped over the edge, staining his pants.

He didn’t notice.

Mrs.

Lee’s expression didn’t change, but Chan saw her hand tighten on the armrest, knuckles going white.

No, Mr.

Lee whispered, “How would I know that? She never said anything.

She never told me.

She sent you a text message.

” September 20th at 2:03 in the morning.

She told you she was pregnant.

Chun placed the phone records on the table, each line highlighted.

You read the message at 209.

6 minutes later, then you deleted it.

The lawyer leaned forward.

Inspector, I need to speak with my client privately.

Of course, Chun stood, moved toward the window.

Take your time.

She waited in the garden, watching koi swim in lazy circles in the pond.

Expensive fish, probably worth thousands of dollars each.

They moved through water like they had nowhere to be.

Nothing to worry about.

Chin envied them.

15 minutes passed.

20.

Finally, the lawyer opened the sliding door.

Inspector, my client wishes to make a statement.

Back inside, Mr.

Lee looked like he’d aged another decade in 20 minutes.

His hands shook so badly he’d put the teacup down.

Mrs.

Lee sat perfectly still beside him, a statue carved from ice and discipline.

Patricia co-spoke first establishing parameters.

My client will answer your questions honestly, but I wanted on record that he is doing so voluntarily, that he is not under arrest and that he is cooperating fully with this investigation.

Noted.

Chen said, “Mr.

Lee’s voice shook as he spoke.

I did have a relationship with Ana.

Physical, yes, it started in April.

There was a storm, a blackout.

My wife was in Hong Kong.

Anya was afraid of the dark.

I tried to comfort her.

We talked for hours about loneliness, about loss, about feeling invisible.

He paused, struggling.

It happened that night.

Not planned.

Not I wasn’t trying to seduce her.

I was just so tired of being alone in my grief.

How many times did this happen? Three times, maybe four.

I’m not certain.

Always when my wife was traveling.

Always in my study late at night.

I told myself it wasn’t wrong because I cared about her.

Because she understood me in ways no one else did.

Did you love her? Mr.

Lee’s face crumpled.

I don’t know what I felt.

Gratitude maybe.

Connection.

She made me feel less alone.

She listened when I talked about Sophia.

She didn’t judge me for my grief, but love.

He shook his head.

I think I was using her.

Pretending she was someone she wasn’t.

Someone who could fix me.

When she told you she was pregnant, what did you do? I panicked.

It was 2:00 in the morning.

I’d been sleeping.

I saw the message and I couldn’t breathe.

I thought she was trying to trap me or that she was mistaken or lying.

I convinced myself she must have been with someone else.

Another man.

It couldn’t be mine.

His voice broke.

I deleted the message.

I told myself if I deleted it, it wasn’t real.

If I didn’t respond, it would go away.

I could pretend it never happened, but it did happen.

I know that now.

Tears ran down his face.

He didn’t wipe them away.

I know that now.

And I have to live with what I did.

What I didn’t do.

Chun turned to Mrs.

Lee.

When did you discover the affair? Mrs.

Lee’s voice was steady, controlled, every word carefully chosen.

September 18th.

I found a letter Ana had written to my husband.

She’d left it on his pillow.

A love letter in Tagalog declaring her feelings.

You read Tagalog? Yes.

I’ve been studying for two years.

I find it useful to understand what household staff are saying.

No shame in admitting she’d been spying.

Just pragmatism.

The letter was explicit in her emotions, not physically.

She said she loved him, that he saw her soul, that she wasn’t afraid of his silence.

What did you do? I asked her to resign.

I offered generous severance.

3 months salary, $5,000.

I asked her to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

Everything was legal.

Inspector, you can check with my lawyer.

Did you know she was pregnant? No.

She never mentioned it.

Mrs.

Lee’s jaw tightened slightly.

If I had known, it wouldn’t have changed my decision.

She still would have needed to leave.

Did you threaten her? I told her the truth.

That she had no future in my household.

that I would give her severance and a reference if she left quietly.

That if she refused, I would have her deported with no severance, no reference, and she would be blacklisted from working overseas again.

That was not a threat, inspector.

That was reality.

Chun felt her temper rising.

She kept her voice level.

You systematically removed every option she had.

You knew she was vulnerable.

You knew she had nowhere to go.

You knew what would happen to a pregnant unmarried Filipino woman forced to return home in disgrace.

Patricia co-interrupted inspector.

My client acted within her legal rights.

Terminating an employee with severance is not illegal.

Requiring confidentiality is not illegal.

Mrs.

Lee did nothing wrong.

Legally, Chun said quietly.

She did nothing wrong legally.

The distinction hung in the air.

Chun pulled out the note found in Ana’s pocket.

The translation typed neatly.

She wrote this before she died.

I thought love could save me, but I forgot.

I was never supposed to be loved, only used.

Chun looked directly at Mr.

Lee.

She goes on to say, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was carrying your child.

” Mr.

Lee made a sound like an animal dying.

His whole body shook.

I didn’t know.

I swear to God.

I didn’t know.

I thought she was lying.

I thought he couldn’t finish.

The baby was yours, Chin said.

Not a question, a fact.

I don’t know.

Maybe.

Probably.

He pressed his hands to his face.

It doesn’t matter now.

They’re both dead because of me.

Did you kill her, Mr.

Lee? No.

God, no.

I didn’t even know she was still in Singapore.

I thought she’d gone back to the Philippines.

I thought she was safe.

Did you pressure her to end the pregnancy? I never spoke to her about it.

I deleted the message.

That’s all I did or all I didn’t do.

Chun turned to Mrs.

Lee.

Did you threaten to harm her if she didn’t leave? I told her the consequences of refusing to resign.

That’s not a threat.

That’s information.

Patricia Cole leaned forward.

Her voice firm.

Inspector, I need to be absolutely clear.

My clients have been cooperative and honest, but no crime has been committed here.

An affair between consenting adults is not illegal.

Terminating an employee with proper severance is not illegal.

My clients did not threaten Miss Tuba with physical harm.

They did not coers her.

They did not cause her death.

Suicide is a tragedy, but it is not murder.

Chin knew the lawyer was right.

She’d known it from the beginning.

Legally, the Lees had done nothing criminal.

Morally, they destroyed a vulnerable woman.

But morality wasn’t enforcable in a court of law.

One more question.

Chin said.

The books in Anna’s suitcase.

For books, all inscribed to your daughter, Sophia.

How did Anna get them? Mrs.

Lee answered smoothly.

I gave them to her.

Sophia loved reading.

After she died, I couldn’t bear seeing her books on the shelves.

Anya enjoyed reading as well.

It seemed appropriate to pass them on.

Did your husband know you gave them to her? Pause.

Half a second too long.

I handle all household matters.

I don’t discuss every detail with my husband.

But Chun saw the lie.

Mrs.

Lee hadn’t given those books to Anya.

Mr.

Lee had his dead daughter’s books, each with a sentence underlined.

Messages in a bottle thrown to another drowning woman.

He’d been trying to save Anna the way he’d failed to save Sophia.

Trying to reach back through time and fix his failures, but he’d only created new ones.

The interview ended with polite thank yous and careful legal disclaimers.

As Chun drove away from Sentosa Cove, she called Dr.

Amanda Woo, the forensic psychologist the department kept on retainer for complex cases.

Dr.

Woo reviewed everything, the case files, the journal entries Anya had kept, the text messages, the timeline.

Her assessment came back within a week, typed in the clinical language of professional distance.

Ana Taguba’s death was a suicide resulting from complex psychological trauma exacerbated by acute environmental stressors.

Childhood sexual abuse, severe poverty, social isolation, unplanned pregnancy, romantic rejection, and sudden employment termination created what we call a perfect storm of risk factors.

She perceived no viable path forward.

The pregnancy was the final precipitating factor.

She couldn’t return home pregnant and unmarried due to cultural and religious stigma.

She couldn’t stay in Singapore without legal employment status.

She couldn’t access abortion services easily due to financial constraints and religious guilt.

She felt trapped with no options.

What about the Lees? Chun asked during their phone consultation.

Are they responsible? Dr.

Wu was quiet for a moment.

Morally, absolutely.

Mr.

Lee engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a profoundly vulnerable employee.

He exploited her emotional fragility and need for connection.

When confronted with the pregnancy, he abandoned her completely.

Mrs.

Lee systematically removed Ana’s support system and financial security while knowing she was vulnerable.

She weaponized Ana’s immigration status and used it as leverage.

But legally, Dr.

Wuide, there’s no crime here, Inspector.

just cruelty disguised as propriety.

Chun made her calls.

The Filipino Embassy, migrant worker advocacy groups, the Ministry of Manpower.

Everyone expressed outrage.

Everyone demanded justice.

Protests were organized.

Petitions were signed.

Opeds were written, but no charges were filed.

No arrests were made.

Because in Singapore, as in most places, being cruel wasn’t illegal.

Using vulnerable people wasn’t illegal.

Abandoning pregnant women wasn’t illegal.

Only dying was unforgivable, and Ana had committed that final crime alone.

The coroner’s inquest was held on October 15th, 2024 in a sterile government building on Hill Street, where fluorescent lights hummed like insects and justice was measured in legal precedence rather than human cost.

The hearing room was small, institutional, designed for bureaucracy, not drama.

Coroner Malcolm Tan presided.

58 years old, methodical, unmoved by emotion after three decades of examining dead bodies and destroyed lives.

He reviewed the autopsy report with the same expression he might use to review a grocery list.

Toxicology results.

Lethal levels of dyenhydromeine and doxyamine.

Police investigation summary.

No evidence of foul play.

Witness testimony.

Nobody had seen Anna after she checked into the hostel.

Inspector Chun testified first.

She laid out the timeline, the evidence, the investigation’s findings.

She spoke in the flat, professional tone required by the setting, but her hands gripped the witness stand edge hard enough to hurt.

Maria Santos testified next, translating the suicide note word by word.

Her voice broke twice.

She’d been doing this work for 30 years, and she still couldn’t make herself numb to it.

The hostile worker, Kumar Singh, testified about finding the body.

His English was heavily accented but clear.

She looked peaceful like she was sleeping but the bottles I saw the bottles.

I knew the leaves did not attend.

Their lawyer submitted written statements that said everything and nothing.

They were devastated.

They’d valued Anya.

They’d had no idea she was struggling.

They hoped this tragedy would lead to better protections for foreign workers.

The ruling came swiftly delivered in corner tan monotone.

death by suicide, drug overdose.

Contributing factors include major depressive disorder, unplanned pregnancy, and recent employment termination, no evidence of foul play, no evidence of criminal negligence.

He added recommendations as coroners do.

The Ministry of Manpower should review protections for foreign domestic workers experiencing crisis.

Employers should be required to provide mental health resources and counseling access.

Pregnant workers should have access to medical care and support regardless of employment status.

The recommendations were duly noted, recorded, filed.

They would be reviewed by committees, discussed in meetings, and ultimately forgotten because recommendations without enforcement were just words.

And words didn’t save women like Anya.

Anna’s body was flown back to Davo City on October 18th.

Philippine Airlines economy cargo hold in a sealed casket.

The cost was covered by a charitable donation from the Lee Foundation for the Arts.

Mrs.

Lee had arranged everything through intermediaries.

The body prepared according to Catholic rights, imbalmed, dressed in white, rosary threaded through folded hands, the coffin modest but respectable.

Transportation and burial expenses paid in full.

It was generous.

It was appropriate.

It was absolutely devoid of genuine remorse.

The funeral was held at Stoton Nino Church in Bangi, Matina.

Small, humid, crowded with people who’d known Anya as a child.

Her mother, Teresa, cried through the entire service, loud sobs that echoed off the concrete walls.

Her father, Eduardo, stood stone-faced and silent, jaw clenched.

Her younger siblings looked confused and frightened.

They’d believed Anna was living a good life in Singapore, sending money home, happy, successful.

Now she was in a box, dead at 29, and nobody would tell them why.

Father Reyes gave the eulogy.

The same priest who’ told 15-year-old Ana she might have tempted her uncle, who’ told her to pray for purity, who’ offered guilt instead of help.

“Anya has returned to God’s embrace,” he inoned, voice carrying over the crying.

We pray for her soul that she may find the peace in death she could not find in life.

We pray that God in his infinite mercy will forgive her final act and welcome her into heaven.

The implication was clear.

Suicide was a mortal sin.

Ana might be damned, but they’d pray for her anyway.

No one mentioned the pregnancy.

The death certificate listed cause of death as acute drug intoxication, manner of death, suicide.

No mention of the 7-week old fetus that had died with her.

No acknowledgement of the life that had been growing, unnamed, unwanted, erased.

Anna was buried in the municipal cemetery, section C, row 14, plot 7.

The plot cost 3,000 pesos, paid from the severance money Mrs.

Lee had given her.

Her mother planted saguita flowers, white and fragrant.

Her father never visited the grave after the burial.

Not once.

Back in Singapore, Mrs.

Lee moved quickly to control the narrative with the efficiency of someone who’d spent a lifetime managing public perception.

3 days after the funeral, she donated Ana’s books to the National Library.

She’d had them retrieved from the police evidence locker once the investigation closed.

She commissioned a small bronze plaque professionally engraved in memory of Ana Tuba 1994 to 2023, a faithful helper who loved literature.

The library accepted graciously, grateful for the donation and the cultural sensitivity gesture.

The plaque was mounted in the Southeast Asian literature section.

Visitors would see it occasionally, perhaps wonder briefly who Ana Tuba was, then move on to browse the shelves.

No one reading it would know anything about the woman it supposedly honored.

Mrs.

Lee issued a carefully crafted media statement through her foundation’s PR firm.

The Lee family is devastated by the tragic loss of Ana Tuba, who worked in our home for 9 months.

We are conducting a comprehensive review of our employment practices to ensure the physical and mental well-being of all household staff.

We sincerely hope that Ana’s death will bring attention to the mental health needs of foreign domestic workers in Singapore and we are committed to being part of the solution.

The statement was masterful, compassionate without admitting fault, forwardinking without acknowledging past failures.

It was picked up by the Straits Times, shared on social media, praised in opeds.

Finally, an employer taking responsibility.

One columnist wrote, “This is how wealthy families should respond to tragedy.

” Another declared, “For two weeks, everyone cared.

Panels were organized.

Experts were consulted.

Policy proposals were drafted.

Then a government minister was caught embezzling public funds.

The news cycle moved on.

Anna was forgotten by everyone except those who destroyed her.

But Mr.

Lee was not capable of forgetting.

3 weeks after Anna’s death, he stopped eating.

Food tasted like ash, he told his wife.

Every bite was guilt.

He stopped sleeping more than two hours a night.

When he did sleep, he dreamed of Anna’s face, Sophia’s face, both women looking at him with the same expression of betrayal.

He would stand outside the locked door of his daughter’s room at 3:00 in the morning talking to ghosts.

The housekeeper would find him there whispering, “I’m sorry, Sophia.

I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.

I’m sorry, Anya.

I’m sorry I used you.

I’m sorry about the baby.

I’m sorry I’m still alive when you’re both dead.

Mrs.Lee found him one morning in his study holding a bottle of pills, not sleeping pills.

His daughter’s anti-depressants kept in a drawer for 2 years like relics.

“I should have died instead of them,” he said calmly, rationally, like he was discussing the weather.

“I’m the one who failed.

I’m the one who destroys everything I touch.

They should be alive and I should be dead.

That’s how it should have been.

” Mrs.Lee called an ambulance, not out of love, but out of obligation.

The scandal of a husband’s suicide so soon after the maid’s death would be impossible to manage.

Mr.Lee was admitted to the Institute of Mental Health under involuntary commitment.

Section 7 of the Mental Health Care and Treatment Act, 72 hours mandatory hold, extended indefinitely.

Diagnosis: Major depressive disorder, severe with suicidal ideiation and psychotic features.

He was placed in ward B3, the secure unit where patients were monitored 24 hours a day.

In the hospital, Mr.Lee barely spoke.

He sat by windows, staring at nothing, watching clouds move across sky.

When doctors asked questions, he gave one word answered.

When they showed him photographs meant to trigger memories or emotions, his wife, his daughter, his home.

He simply stared with dead eyes.

But he asked one question repeatedly to every nurse who attended him.

Did she ever say she was happy? The nurses didn’t know who he meant.

They wrote it in their reports as confused, disoriented, proverating an unknown female figure.

One year passed like water flowing toward ocean.

Inexurable, unstoppable.

September 2024, the Singapore Employers Federation held its annual awards ceremony at the Shangria Hotel.

Ballroom C.Capacity 200.

Government ministers, business leaders, philanthropists, people who believe their wealth made them benevolent.

Mrs.Lee wore burgundy silk that cost $3,000.

Her hair was perfect, her makeup flawless, her smile practiced until it looked genuine.

She received the Excellence in Caregiver Welfare Award for the Lee Foundation Scholarship Program.

10 scholarships awarded to Filipino domestic workers pursuing continuing education, each worth $5,000, exactly the amount she’d given Anna to disappear.

The irony was lost on everyone.

Mrs.Lee’s acceptance speech was moving, heartfelt, perfectly delivered.

She’d practiced in front of a mirror for hours.

We must do better for the women who serve in our homes, she said, her voice carrying across the ballroom.

They are not just workers.

They are human beings with dreams, with fears, with needs that we too often ignore.

Ana Tuba’s death was a wake-up call for my family and should be a wake-up call for all of us.

Let her legacy be one of positive change, of greater compassion, of recognizing the humanity in those who work in the shadows of our privilege.

The audience applauded.

Several people wiped tears.

A government minister told her afterward, “This is exactly the kind of corporate social responsibility we need more of.

What none of them knew, the scholarship was fully taxdeductible.

The foundation had received $50,000 in additional donations after the positive press from Anya’s death.

Mrs.

Lee’s reputation had never been better.

She turned tragedy into opportunity, death into profit.

In Davo City, Terresa Tuba visited her daughter’s grave on the 22nd of every month.

The day Ana had died, she brought Saguita flowers bought with money from the severance.

She knelt in the dirt and prayed the rosary.

She still didn’t know the whole truth.

The police had been kind but vague.

Depression.

They’d said, “Your daughter was depressed.

It happens sometimes to workers overseas.

The isolation, the stress.

” Teresa didn’t understand depression.

In her world, you didn’t have time to be depressed.

You had mouths to feed and bills to pay.

But she accepted the explanation because what else could she do? She didn’t know about Mr.Lee.

didn’t know about the affair, the pregnancy, the abandonment.

She believed Anna had been happy in Singapore until something invisible had broken inside her.

Sometimes Teresa talked to the grave as if Ana could hear her.

Your brother got a scholarship.

Your sister is studying nursing.

Your father finally stopped drinking.

We used the money you sent to fix the roof.

Everything is better now, an everything except you not being here in Singapore.

In a temperature-cont controlled evidence locker at the central police division, Anna’s belongings remain sealed in plastic bags, the letter, the pregnancy test, the books inscribed to Sophia, the Nokia phone with its deleted messages, evidence of a crime that wasn’t legally a crime, proof that sometimes the law and justice have nothing to do with each other.

Inspector Chun Ming retired in October 2024.

23 years on the force.

Hundreds of cases closed, most of them satisfactory, most of them put to rest.

But Anna’s case haunted her.

She kept an unofficial copy of the file in her home office against regulations.

Sometimes late at night when she couldn’t sleep, she’d read through it again, looking for something she’d missed, some law that had been broken, some way to hold the Le accountable beyond the court of public opinion.

She never found it.

In her final report filed the day before her retirement, Chun wrote, “No crime was committed in the death of Ana Tuba, but a woman is dead and her baby with her.

The law protected the powerful as it always does.

Ana Tuba never had a chance.

Not in Davo, not in Singapore, not anywhere.

She thought being seen meant being saved.

” But she was wrong.

Being seen just meant being used more efficiently.

The system that killed her remains unchanged, ready to kill the next woman who believes she matters.

The report was filed, archived, forgotten.

At the Institute of Mental Health, Mr.

Lee remained a patient.

Ward B3, room 7.

Indefinite commitment.

His condition had not improved despite medication, therapy, and time.

He still asked his question every single day.

His nurse, Maria Santos, a different Maria, younger, coincidentally also Filipina, had learned to answer him.

She knew he wouldn’t remember.

His short-term memory was damaged by medication and trauma, but she answered anyway because silence felt cruel.

Did she ever say she was happy? Maria, who’d read the case files because she was curious, who’d seen the translated journal entries, who understood what had really happened, said gently.

Yes, sir.

She said you made her feel seen.

She wrote that loving you was the first time she felt like she existed, like she was real.

Mr.Lee stared out the window at the Singapore skyline.

I destroyed her.

Yes, sir.

You did.

And the baby? This was new.

He’d never mentioned the baby before.

Maybe some wall in his mind had broken.

She was going to name her Sophia, sir.

After your daughter, she wrote it in her journal.

She thought maybe you’d love the baby even if you couldn’t love her.

Mr.After Lee closed his eyes, a single tear ran down his face, slow and heavy.

I destroyed them both.

Then he forgot again, the information slipping away like water through fingers.

By evening, he’d be asking the same question.

Tomorrow, too, forever.

Maria crossed herself as she left his room.

She whispered in Tagalog, “Padawarinia, Ana, Padawarin mosang laa, forgive him, Ana, forgive them all.

” But Ana couldn’t forgive anyone.

Anna was in the ground in Davo City, buried with her unnamed baby girl and her unfulfilled dreams and her final belief that love could save her.

Another invisible woman, another forgotten story, another name nobody would remember except as a cautionary tale about the dangers of reaching above your station.

The system that had failed her continued unchanged.

Wealthy families still employed vulnerable workers.

Power imbalances still led to exploitation.

Affairs still happened.

Pregnancies still occurred.

Women still died.

And people like Mrs.

Lee still received awards for excellence.

While the women they destroyed stayed buried and forgotten.

Because in the end, the world valued appearances more than truth, propriety more than justice, silence more than screaming.

Ana Tuba had learned this lesson too late.

She thought love could save her.

But love was just another word people used when they meant use.

And she’d been used until there was nothing left.

No life, no baby, no hope, no name anyone would remember.

Just a bronze plaque in a library that misspelled compassion as charity.

And a grave visited by a mother who still believed her daughter had been happy until the day she died.

And a truth that stayed buried because truth was inconvenient and the powerful prefer convenience.

The silent guest had left the building, and no one who could have saved her had tried hard enough.

The end came quietly, as it always does for invisible women.

Not with justice or revelation or redemption, just with silence.

Complete and permanent and final.