Invoice lottery fever had swept the country lately. Any purchase over a hundred dollars qualified you to scan a code for a chance at winning up to eight hundred bucks. I was so obsessed with collecting receipts that I'd even gone back and contacted customer service for orders placed ten years ago.

William Dickerson sat beside me, laughing. "Have you lost your mind? All this effort for pocket change?"

I ignored him. That night, after he passed out drunk, I took his phone, figuring I'd check his apps for any receipts he might have missed.

I opened the invoice manager. The very first receipt, pinned right at the top, nailed me to the spot.

It had been issued yesterday afternoon.

Amount: $68,000.

Vendor: Golden Cradle Premier Private Maternity Hospital.

Line item: Deposit for Luxury Elite Maternity Recovery Center Package.

I stared at the screen. My breath stopped.

When I'd had our daughter, I'd begged to spend a few thousand on a postpartum nurse. William had refused, calling me spoiled and wasteful. He'd dragged his mother in to take care of me instead. I'd spent my entire recovery under that woman's withering glare and walked away with health problems I still carried to this day.

Now, the same man who mocked me for chasing a few hundred dollars in lottery prizes had dropped sixty-eight thousand on a maternity recovery center for someone else without blinking.

Whose baby was about to be born?

——

I didn't make a scene. I screenshotted the receipt, sent it to my own phone, and put his back where I'd found it.

The next morning, William Dickerson ate breakfast as usual, wiped his mouth, and left for work.

The second he was out the door, I called a cab to Golden Cradle.

I walked up to the front desk, forcing my trembling hands still, and managed a smile.

"Hi. I'm William Dickerson's wife. He booked a sixty-eight-thousand-dollar package here yesterday and asked me to come take a look at the facilities. I also want to make sure the check-in information was filled out correctly."

The receptionist blinked, typed a few things into her computer, then looked up with a polished smile.

"Mrs. Dickerson, hello. Your husband did book our Luxury Elite package. However, the name registered for the stay is... a Ms. Agnes Fox. Her due date is early next month."

Agnes Fox.

She was an intern at William's company.

Just last month, William's company had thrown a team outing where employees could bring family. Agnes had walked right up to me holding a glass of juice, calling me "Mrs. Dickerson" in the sweetest, most obedient voice, gushing about what a wonderful wife I was, telling me William was the luckiest man alive to have married me.

So that was what she'd been hiding under that oversized sun jacket. A belly. Carrying my husband's child.

The receptionist cheerfully handed me a brochure.

"Our Elite package includes a pain-free delivery, a river-view VIP suite, a round-the-clock premium postpartum nurse, and daily custom-prepared bird's nest soup and sea cucumber meals..."

I watched her mouth move. Not a single word registered.

When I'd had our daughter, I hemorrhaged. I was so weak I couldn't get out of bed. I'd begged William to spend a few thousand on a postpartum nurse.

He'd screamed at me right in front of his mother.

"A nurse? For what? You're just spoiled and wasteful! You think that money grows on trees? My mother is perfectly capable of taking care of you. Women used to get back on their feet days after giving birth!"

That entire recovery, I ate plain boiled noodles his mother threw together, dragged myself out of bed in the middle of the night with stitches still tearing to breastfeed, and ground my way through every single day until the damage to my body became permanent.

Now he'd dropped sixty-eight thousand on the royal treatment for another woman without so much as a flinch.

That evening, William pushed open the front door, humming a tune.

I didn't waste words. I slapped the printed receipt down on the coffee table.

"Golden Cradle Maternity Recovery Center. Sixty-eight thousand dollars." I looked him dead in the eye. "Care to explain, William?"

William froze mid-step, one shoe still in his hand.

The panic on his face lasted barely a second before it twisted into irritation.

"Celine, what is wrong with you? Going through my phone every night while I'm asleep?"

He yanked off his tie and strode toward her.

"That booking was for Mr. Wang's mistress. She's pregnant, and he didn't want his wife finding the charges, so he ran it through my card. He already paid me back in cash."

His tone was righteous, indignant.

"Do you have any idea how the corporate world works? The boss's private business is none of yours. If you blow my career over this, can you afford the consequences? It's bad enough you've lost your mind entering sweepstakes for pocket change. Now you're playing detective like some paranoid housewife?"

Watching him stand there on his moral high ground, turning the accusation back on her, Celine felt the blood in her veins go cold, inch by inch.

She drew a slow breath and lifted her chin, locking her eyes on his.

"Is that so?" She let a thin smile pull at her lips. "And Mr. Wang's mistress just happens to be named Agnes Fox?"

At the name, William's pupils contracted sharply.

But he recovered fast, his composure snapping back into place.

"Have you been watching too many detective shows? Wang's wife monitors everything. Of course he'd register it under Agnes's name. Who else would he use, you? If you really have that much free time, try cleaning the house instead of acting like a lunatic."

He bellowed it without a shred of guilt.

Celine stood rooted to the spot. For one disorienting moment, his airtight logic almost made her doubt herself.

But instinct screamed from somewhere deep in her gut. Something was wrong.

Then, from the bedroom, their daughter's wail shattered the silence.

Celine rushed in and pressed a hand to the girl's forehead. She was burning up. A hundred and three.

"William, she has a high fever! Get the car, we need to go to the hospital now!"

Sweat beaded across Celine's forehead.

William grabbed his keys with a grunt of annoyance and headed for the door without looking back.

"I've got an emergency meeting. It's just a fever. Take a cab. Stop expecting me to drop everything for you."

The front door slammed shut behind him.

Celine stood in the cold night air, clutching her feverish, half-delirious daughter, and waited thirty minutes before a cab finally came.

She spent the rest of the night in the overcrowded pediatric ER of the public hospital, waiting in line until dawn.

He could swipe his card for a $6,800 maternity recovery center without blinking, but he couldn't spare ten minutes to drive his own daughter to the hospital.

The next afternoon, William texted to say he'd left an important contract at home and needed her to bring it to the office immediately.

Celine dragged herself there, dark circles carved under her eyes from the sleepless night, and pushed open the half-closed door to his private office.

The scene inside hit her like a slap.

Agnes stood beside William's desk, her belly swollen and round, leaning against the edge as she poured him water with a coy, simpering smile. William gazed at her with a look so tender it practically dripped honey.

"Oh! Mrs. Gilbert!"

Agnes spotted Celine in the doorway and let out a startled yelp, scrambling to grab the designer handbag on the desk.

The bag slipped from her fingers and hit the floor with a clatter. Its contents scattered everywhere.

An ultrasound printout. And a bank card. Both landed right at Celine's feet.

She stared at the bank card, and the world narrowed to a single, deafening buzz.

That was her debit card.

A few days ago, William had said he needed to check her account statements and took the card. He'd never given it back.

That account held everything she'd saved over the past few years from freelance illustration work, pulling late nights after her daughter was asleep. Combined with the nest egg her parents had left her, it came to eighty thousand dollars.

That was the down payment they'd agreed to put toward a home in a good school district for their daughter by the end of the year.

Why was it in Agnes Fox's purse?!

My whole body trembled. I lunged forward to grab the card.

"Why do you have this?"

Before my fingers even touched it, William rushed over and shoved me hard. I stumbled backward, the small of my back slamming into the sharp corner of his desk. Pain shot up my spine, and I sucked in a breath through clenched teeth.

But William was already shielding Agnes behind him, jabbing a finger in my face.

"What the hell is wrong with you, Celine?! Agnes is a single mom who just got scammed out of her money by some deadbeat. I lent her that card so she'd have somewhere to store her work funds. Is that a crime? Can you stop looking at her like she's some kind of thief?!"

Agnes cowered behind him, dabbing at her tears with trembling fingers. "I'm so sorry, Celine. This is all my fault. Please don't blame William..."

I stared at him. Long and hard. Then I snatched the scattered documents off the floor and hurled them into his chest before turning on my heel and walking out.

The moment I stepped outside, I hailed a cab to the nearest bank.

When the teller slid the transaction history across the counter, my hands shook so badly I could barely hold the thin sheets of paper.

Balance: $14.20.

Every last dollar of my eighty thousand in savings, drained over the past six months. Transfer after transfer, chipped away in small amounts, funneled into an account I'd never seen before.

I sat on the bench outside the bank for a long time that afternoon, turning everything over in my mind.

By the time I dragged my numb body home and pushed open the front door, I found my mother-in-law sprawled across the living room couch with her feet up, watching TV. Sunflower seed shells littered the floor around her like confetti.

Dorothy Dickerson had shown up from the countryside without so much as a phone call.

She didn't even glance up when I walked in. Her voice dripped with that particular brand of acid she saved just for me.

"Well, well. Mrs. Dickerson finally decided to drag herself home from wherever she's been gallivanting. My son works himself half to death out there, and you can't even have a hot meal waiting? A woman who won't even give her husband a second child, a boy at that. Honestly, I don't know what he married you for."

I looked at her coldly.

Every appliance in this house, every bag of rice, every bottle of cooking oil. I'd paid for all of it, working freelance jobs until my eyes blurred at three in the morning. Where did she get off lecturing me?

I ignored her and walked straight toward the kitchen.

That was when the front door opened again.

William walked in carrying armfuls of shopping bags stuffed with supplements and tonics. And behind him, belly swollen and unmistakable, was Agnes Fox.

"Why did you bring her here?"

I fixed my eyes on William.

He didn't flinch. If anything, he arranged his features into an expression of saintly compassion.

"Don't get the wrong idea, Celine. Agnes's ex-husband was abusive. Her lease ran out and she got kicked out of her apartment. Our boss felt sorry for her and asked me to help her out for a few days. Besides, now that Mom's here in the city, Agnes is hardworking and well-mannered. She can help with the housework, keep Mom company. Think of it as free help around the house. What's wrong with that?"

Free help around the house.

What happened at dinner ground that lie into dust.

Dorothy emerged from the kitchen cradling a bowl of premium bird's nest soup, fragrant steam curling from its surface. She set it down in front of Agnes with a warmth I'd never once seen directed at me.

"Agnes, sweetheart, eat it while it's hot. Oh, just look at how you're carrying. Pointed belly like that, it's definitely a boy! A woman's worth is in what she can produce, I always say. Even a single mother has something to fall back on if she's got a son. Not like some people. Sitting on the nest and never laying an egg."

Then she turned to me, slamming a plate of leftover stir-fried cabbage and pork from the night before onto the table in front of me.

"You eat this. No sense letting it go to waste."

Free help around the house?

This wasn't about hiring a housekeeper. Dorothy had come to the city to personally wait on her precious little songbird while she carried what they all hoped was a golden grandson.

Agnes picked up her spoon with dainty, delicate fingers. Mid-bite, she let out a soft "Oh my!" and turned her wrist just so. A diamond ring caught the overhead light and flashed, sharp and blinding.

It was the matching ring from my first wedding anniversary. The one I'd designed and paid for myself.