Chapter 1

Every time my mother-in-law came asking for money to prop up her younger son, I'd hand her a signed ledger sheet:

"Sign the IOU, take the cash."

They all thought I was just going through the motions. Not once did any of them ever pay a cent back.

Then, when I was eight months pregnant, my husband slapped a divorce agreement down on the dining table.

His mother stood beside him, all smiles.

"Sweetie, just bear with a pretend divorce so we can transfer the house. The second your brother's got his property paperwork done, we'll remarry, I promise!"

"It's just a signature, that's all."

I looked at the clause on the agreement, the one that said the wife walks away with nothing, and passed him the pen and the ink pad.

He signed fast. Pressed his thumbprint just as fast.

And the moment he tucked that agreement away to head off to the county property records office,

I changed the door lock code and kicked his suitcase out the door.

"Congratulations."

"Starting now, we really are divorced."

1

For a few seconds it was quiet out in the hall.

Craig James hadn't understood a word I'd said.

"Dorothy Henson, what the hell has gotten into you?"

He wrenched the handle a few times, hard, and the keypad lock let out an alarm.

"Open this door, now!"

"Morton's waiting to go to the records office."

"If the transfer gets held up, Clara's family is going to raise hell again."

I answered through the door.

"If he can't get married, what does that have to do with me?"

Craig kept pounding on the door.

"Don't you throw a tantrum just because you're pregnant!"

"You agreed to the fake divorce yourself. Said it with your own mouth."

"The waiting period's over, we picked up the divorce papers today, and now you're causing a scene?"

I glanced at the crisp new divorce certificate on the corner of the table.

Coming out of the county clerk's office today, he'd pulled out a document he called a divorce agreement, when it was really a supplementary property arrangement, and tricked me into signing over the house.

He'd been too eager. All he cared about was watching me sign; he never once read what he was putting his own name to.

"So you know we've already gotten the divorce papers."

I ran a hand over my belly.

"Which means we have nothing to do with each other now."

"I bought this house outright before we married. You have no right to live here."

"And the transfer? Keep dreaming."

Joyce Lambert's cursing came through the door.

"This is outrageous!"

She started kicking it.

"Craig is your husband, so his brother is your own brother!"

"You get to live in a place this big while Morton can't even get married. Do you have no conscience at all?"

"Mom, take it easy."

Craig lowered his voice to calm her, then shouted at me,

"Dorothy, don't push this to the point of no return."

"Once the house goes to Morton, I'll still take you back, same as before."

"Take me back?"

I laughed out loud.

"Take me back to whose house?"

Joyce couldn't hold it in and screeched,

"The house goes to Morton, so of course it's Morton's!"

"You're a woman who married into this family. You think you get to hog the James family's property?"

"Once she's had the baby and finished her recovery, we send her back to her own people!"

Craig gave the door a kick.

"Dorothy, don't listen to my mom's nonsense."

"I'm warning you, if you don't sign that deed of gift, I have plenty of ways to deal with you."

"You're carrying my child in there."

"Prenatal checkups, the hospital, raising the kid, which of those doesn't cost money?"

"Push me too far and you won't see a single dollar of child support!"

I recorded every word coming from the other side of the door.

"Are you finished?"

Craig sneered.

"You've even quit your job. How many days is the little bit of money you've got going to last?"

"A woman about to give birth. What are you going to do without me?"

It went on for another ten minutes or so before it finally stopped.

Before he left, Craig slammed the door one last time.

"Tomorrow you'll be begging me to come back!"

Once the footsteps faded, I went into the bedroom and opened the safe at the very back of the closet.

Inside were more than sixty IOUs, along with the matching bank records for every one of them.

Every IOU carried Joyce's and Morton's signatures, their ID numbers, and their red thumbprints.

I was sliding the papers into a document folder when my phone suddenly buzzed.

A message from Craig.

"Hand over the house and I'll still keep you as my wife."

"Otherwise you and that baby in your belly can live or die on your own. Don't come to me."

I'd just finished the screen recording when a sharp cramp shot through my lower belly.

It took half a minute before the pain slowly ebbed away.

I picked up my phone, about to call the doctor.

Another message from Craig popped up on the screen.

"Since you won't take the easy way, tomorrow I'll have you on your knees begging me to open the door!"