Chapter 2

2: 2

2.

A flicker of hesitation crossed my son's eyes, but he still took the bottle from my hand.

"Thanks, Mom."

Once I was out of the room, I started going over the house carefully.

The living room, the kitchen, my bedroom, even the bathroom—there were cameras in all of them.

Tiny red lights blinking on and off. If it weren't for the floating warning comments, I never would have noticed.

I didn't know when the cameras had gone up, or how long they'd been there.

But I knew that from today on, the family and the son I'd been so proud of were rotten through and through.

My son had already packed and was waiting by the door.

Seeing how white my face was, he asked, out of instinct, whether I was all right.

"Mom, are you not feeling well? Maybe I should just go to school on my own?"

I said no. "It's fine. I'm just a little tired."

I rinsed my face quickly and took him out.

I'd barely flagged down a cab and loaded his bags into the trunk when my phone rang in my pocket.

My mother-in-law's voice came through, thick with tears.

"Mattie, it's bad—your father-in-law's having a heart attack, come quick and take him to the hospital!"

My son's eyes settled on me too.

"Mom, Grandpa's sick. You should take him to the hospital."

"You're not coming?" I asked him.

He shook his head. "The teacher said I have to check in tonight."

I didn't push it.

I walked over to the driver and got his number.

I sent him a hundred bucks over Venmo and asked him to keep an eye on my son.

The second the cab pulled off, I texted the driver again.

Five hundred this time, to text me the address where my son got out.

Once that was arranged, I hailed my own cab straight to my in-laws' place.

My father-in-law's face was flushed and pink, healthier-looking than mine.

My mother-in-law insisted on getting him to the hospital anyway.

A full workup wasn't enough—she wanted him admitted for a few days of observation on top of it.

I didn't argue. I ran up and down settling the bills.

I offered to stay the night at the hospital.

Once my father-in-law was asleep, I checked my phone.

The driver told me my son had reached the school.

But partway there he'd handed the driver two hundred for lost time and had him pull up outside an upscale complex.

Said he was going to a classmate's place to pick something up, and made a point of telling him not to tell me.

"He went up for an hour and came down looking pretty pleased with himself."

"If you ask me, your boy's got himself a girlfriend."

"Kids that age start getting ideas. You'll want to keep an eye on that."

But I was staring at that address, lost in it.

Unit 701, Building 3, Sunnyvale Gardens. The apartment I'd wanted to buy five years ago.

I'd wired every cent to Sebastian, and he'd told me the place had already been sold.

I didn't cry. I looked up the owner's information online instead.

Marina Pruitt. The transfer date was the exact day, five years back, that Sebastian told me the place was sold.

Then I got the bank to pull the transactions from that same day.

Seven hundred thousand for the apartment, down to the last cent, deposited into Marina Pruitt's account.

The floating comments started scrolling right then.

【Yes, yes, yes! Your husband's old flame is named Marina Pruitt!】

【They've been together forever. Your husband spent a fortune on her.】

【Your son isn't yours either—he's Marina and your husband's. She was born with an underdeveloped uterus, so they had to do IVF!】

So the betrayal had started far earlier than I ever imagined.

I barely slept all night.

Come morning, my mother-in-law was still working out an excuse to keep me at the bedside another day.

The sight of my ashen face startled her.

She told me to go home first and catch a few hours' sleep.

I didn't refuse. But I didn't go home either.

I took a cab to Sunnyvale Gardens.

Following the floating comments, I sat down in the coffee shop across the street.

Ten minutes later my dead husband, Sebastian, walked into the breakfast place opposite, holding a woman's hand.