Chapter 1

The day I found out my boyfriend was cheating, I grabbed a kitchen knife and went straight to the other woman's place.

"If you're going to betray me, then none of us gets to walk away." I said it to them with a smile.

It was my mother who threw herself in front of me, crying, begging me not to do anything rash.

"You're my only daughter. If something happens to you, what am I supposed to do for the rest of my life?"

My father cheated when I was in grade school. After the divorce, my mother raised me alone. She was the most important person in the world to me, and I couldn't stand to make her worry.

In the end, it all wrapped up with my mother forcing Kerry Sanchez to get down and bow to me three times.

After that, Kerry reported his every move, granted my every wish, and my mother was with me every single day, taking care of me down to the smallest detail.

Everyone said I had the perfect family.

Then came Mother's Day, when I came home early carrying a bouquet of carnations, planning to surprise her.

The door wasn't shut all the way, and voices drifted out from inside.

"Mom, Katherine Simmons's recovering really well. Next time I'll take you to see the baby."

"If you hadn't covered for me all this time, and let Katherine move into the old house, we couldn't have lived so peacefully all these years."

My mother sighed. "As long as you're good to Katherine, and you don't hold it against me for making you kneel back then. I did all of this hoping Katherine could be happy."

So the reformed man was a lie, the model family was a lie. They'd been staging this whole thing, all because they were afraid I'd hurt that woman.

The words had barely faded when my mother pulled a jade bracelet out of the cabinet and pressed it into Kerry's hand. "Give this to Katherine for me. It wasn't easy for her, having the baby. Today's Mother's Day, so Cora Fox's bound to want to spend it with me and I can't get away. I'll make some chicken soup and go see her tomorrow."

But I distinctly remembered that bracelet was her most treasured piece of jewelry, the one she'd always said she'd give to me one day.

Kerry took the bracelet from her.

"Mom, you really do adore Katherine. I don't even know how to thank you."

My mother waved him off. "Why talk like that, we're family. I've thought of Katherine as my own daughter for a long time now. Having a good man like you to love her, I couldn't be happier."

"Thinking back on what happened, it still frightens me. Cora went to Katherine's place with a kitchen knife, and I didn't even stop to think, I just put myself between them. I was so afraid that knife would come down on her. Thank goodness nothing happened in the end."

"Cora takes after me, gets worked up over the smallest thing. Why couldn't she be gentle and gracious like Katherine? No wonder you like her."

The air was warm, but all I felt was a cold that went to the bone, and my hands around the carnations wouldn't stop shaking.

My mother of all people had been through this, betrayed by a cheating husband, so how could she say something like that?

Back when she'd first found out my father was cheating, she couldn't sleep for nights on end, crying until she could barely breathe, and I was the one who wiped her tears away bit by bit, the one who got her through the worst of it.

And now she was calling Kerry's betrayal of me a small thing.

The two people I'd once thought mattered most, my mother and Kerry, had been running me in circles for the sake of another woman.

Then what about me? What did I count for? Was this just their way of keeping me calm, because they were afraid I'd hurt her?

I didn't go in. I turned around, went back downstairs, and dropped the carnations in the trash.

At the entrance to the complex, I flagged down a cab.

I got in dazed, unable to accept it for the longest time.

It wasn't until the driver spoke up, "Where to, miss?", that I gave him the address of our old house.

He could see I was down, and he tried to make conversation.

"Miss, you look upset. Something weighing on you? My daughter's about your age. I always tell her, as long as you're happy that's all that matters, don't overthink the rest."

"If your daughter's boyfriend cheated on her, what would you do?" I asked.

The driver went still for a beat, then answered with a flash of anger. "Something like that happens to her, and it'll be a miracle if I don't put that man and his mistress in the hospital."

Right. I'd thought every parent would stand behind their child, no matter what. So why wouldn't mine?

I was still thinking it over when the cab pulled up at the address.

This apartment had been my parents' marriage home. After the divorce, my mother would keep getting swept up in old feelings whenever she was there, so she took me and moved out. It held the only memory I had of a whole family.

Two years ago she suddenly told me she'd rented it out, and I never questioned it. It never occurred to me that renting it out was the lie, and what was real was the person she'd hidden inside.

Standing at the door, my hand around the key kept trembling, and it took me several tries to get it into the lock.

I opened the door and saw two pairs of slippers in the entryway, one black, and a pink pair shaped like rabbits.

The place had been renovated. You couldn't tell it had ever looked the way it once did.

Pink was everywhere I looked, pale pink walls, a flesh-pink sofa, even the tissue box on the table was pink.

And Kerry had always told me pink was the color he hated most.

I pushed open the door to my old bedroom, and there was nothing left of what it used to be. It had been turned into a nursery.

There was a crib in it, piles of all kinds of toys, and a few books about raising children set out around them.

On the other side, the master bedroom wall was covered with photos of Kerry and Katherine, at an amusement park, celebrating her birthday, on a trip to the beach together. They'd had so much time together, and I'd never noticed a thing.

It suddenly came back to me. One night last week Kerry came home very late, and I'd meant to go to his company to find him. In the end my mother said she didn't want me tiring myself out, and she'd go in my place.

She came back and told me Kerry was working late at the office. But I'd clearly caught a scent on her that didn't belong to any office.

The last time Kerry went on a business trip, she was the one who laid the notice in front of me too, and I never once doubted it.

All these years my mother kept saying she'd keep an eye on Kerry for me. But everything she did was making chances for him and Katherine to be together, hiding it all from me.

The two of them. One kept covering to create openings for Katherine, the other played the perfect husband every day so I wouldn't find out, and between them they built Katherine this safe little harbor.

Only I was caught in the middle, run in circles like a fool.