Chapter 1

Holding the hospital's payment notice, I stood at the foot of the inpatient ward and stared at the number, “680,000”, my temples pounding.

That number was a mountain, and it came down straight on the crown of my head.

My husband, Timothy Chavez, had kidney failure. A transplant was his only way to live.

But 680,000 dollars. Where was I supposed to find that?

I gripped the paper so hard my nails nearly tore through it.

Just as the money was choking the breath out of me, a strange number called. On the other end was a hoarse man's voice, and out of nowhere he said,

“Regina Fox, it's been thirty years. That bowl. It's time to sell it.”

I froze. A ringing went through my head, like a thunderclap splitting the air.

“Mom, what did the doctor say?”

I'd barely stepped out of the payment office when my son, Stephen Chavez, and his wife, Lorna Lambert, hurried up to me.

The smell of disinfectant in the hospital corridor mixed with the anxiety of patients and their families, churning my insides.

I didn't speak. I just held out the payment slip.

Stephen's face went white in an instant, his lips trembling.

“Six... 680,000? That much?”

Lorna snatched the slip away, her eyes going round, and her voice pitched up sharp.

“This is robbery! One surgery costs 680,000? Don't you both know what shape this family's in? We could cut the flesh off our own bones and sell it and still not scrape that together!”

Her voice wasn't loud, wasn't quiet, just right so everyone in the hallway could hear.

A few glances came at us all at once, some pitying, some just there for the show, and they stuck in my back like needles.

My face went hot. I grabbed her arm and dropped my voice.

“Lorna, keep it down! This is a hospital!”

“Mom, what good does keeping it down do? Is money going to fall out of the sky on its own?”

Lorna shook off my hand, her eyes rimming red.

“Stephen and I bring home a little over ten thousand a month between us. The mortgage alone is six thousand, the kid's preschool is three thousand, and the thousand that's left, the two of us have to think twice before we even buy a cup of milk tea. Where would we get that kind of money?”

Stephen stood off to the side, head down, wringing his hands, saying the same thing over and over.

“What do we do... what are we supposed to do……”

Watching my son stand there with no idea what to do, the anger in me flared right up.

But I knew now wasn't the time for it. I drew a deep breath and forced the tightness back down.

“Don't panic,” I said, looking at the two of them, though I was telling myself too.

“The sky isn't falling. The money, I'll figure it out.”

“You'll figure it out? How?” There was mistrust in Lorna's tone, and a meanness that came from being cornered. “Your and Dad's little pensions put together don't even cover our mortgage. And your savings, didn't most of that go the last time Dad was in the hospital? What, are you going to go take out a loan shark loan?”

“Watch your mouth!”

I shot her a look.

“What else is there, then?”

Lorna wouldn't let it go. She glanced at Stephen, hanging his head, then clenched her teeth like she was working herself up to something big.

“Mom, I have an idea…… why don't we, why don't we sell the old house we're living in now.”

A ringing went through my head, like I'd been hit with a hammer.

Sell the house?

My hand curled into a fist before I knew it.

That house was assigned to us by Old Tim's workplace when we married, six hundred square feet, old and small, but it was the home Old Tim and I had built brick by brick, bit by bit.

The pencil marks tracking Stephen's height as he grew up were there. The laughter of the three of us wrapping dumplings at New Year was there. The first meal Old Tim ever cooked for me was there……

It wasn't just a house. It was our root.

“No.”

I refused, flat and final, my voice low, every word forced out from between my teeth.

“Why not?”

Lorna got worked up.

“That house has to be worth well over a million by now, right? Sell it, and Dad's surgery is covered, and there's still money left over for us to work with, or for a down payment on a bigger place, so we won't have to be crammed into that little two-bedroom. Three birds with one stone!”

Looking at Lorna's face, flushed red with excitement, a cold went straight to my bones.

Every sentence out of her was “us,” every sentence weighing what was best for her and Stephen's little household.

My husband's life, to her, had become a transaction, something to trade off, something she could even turn a profit on.

I turned my eyes to my son, Stephen.

I wanted him to say one fair word.

But he only dodged my gaze and mumbled,

“Mom…… Lorna, she…… she's just worried too……”

My heart sank, bit by bit.

The son I'd raised with everything I had, and when it mattered most, he couldn't get out one firm word for his father, for this family.

“The house is my line.”

I said it one word at a time, my voice cold as ice.

“As long as I'm alive, no one so much as thinks about that house. The money, I'll raise it. The two of you, just take good care of your father.”

With that, I didn't look at them again. I turned and walked off.

Behind me, Lorna's complaints and Stephen's coaxing chased after me like flies, but I didn't stop, not for one step.

I was afraid that if I stayed one second longer, I wouldn't be able to stop myself from slapping them both across the face.