Chapter 4

That night, the property manager called me.

"Mrs. Swanson, we've found a buyer for your daughter's place on the East Side. The contract signing is tomorrow at ten thirty."

My mind stalled for a couple of seconds. Then I remembered how, five years ago, she'd complained she couldn't stand living in the college dorms.

My husband had bought her a place nearby, paid in full.

That home was the safety net we'd left for her, and now she was cutting it away herself.

"The house is hers. If she wants to sell it, let her."

After the call ended, another message flashed up on my phone, this one from the bank.

The retirement fund in Elena Swanson's name. An early-redemption request.

A few days later, the jewelry store called me.

She'd taken the pieces I'd given her over the years and sold them back.

The diamond necklace from her eighteenth birthday. The jade bangle I'd had specially made when she finished her master's. The pearl earrings I'd put together for her when she signed on at her job.

All of it, cashed out clean.

My husband asked whether we should freeze the accounts, get a lawyer involved.

I shook my head. "She has to taste it for herself. What life is really like with no money."

Elena's video channel kept getting busier.

She'd renamed the account "Elena's Married Life."

One day it was a buffet at a five-star hotel, the next it was Hilary Cobb driving her out of town in a rented luxury car.

On camera she wore a newly bought dress, held up a champagne glass, and smiled at Hilary.

"My husband says now that we're married, my only job is to be happy. He handles the money."

Someone in the comments asked, "Isn't your husband a hairstylist? How'd he suddenly get rich?"

Elena replied fast.

"Some men live off their degrees, some live off their talent. My husband is the second kind."

I scrolled down and saw that the blogger, the one who ran the "how it ends when you insist on marrying a broke guy" content, had left another comment.

"The dignity you're propping him up with by selling your house and your funds, that's not him having talent. A man who really loved you wouldn't be in such a hurry to empty out everything you have."

Elena wrote back a whole paragraph.

"You're just jealous that I have a good husband. One look at your page says it all. Dumped by your man, then losing your mind every day telling other people to get divorced. As ugly as you are, you've got the nerve to lecture me on how to live? Your husband didn't want you. You deserve it!"

Below, some people egged her on, and some called her too cruel.

Elena blocked everyone who criticized her and left only the comments praising how great her love was.

I set my phone face-down on the coffee table, picked up the syringe, and gave myself the shot in the belly, the motion practiced now.

Stimulation, egg retrieval, embryo culture, transfer.

Every step was harder than I'd expected.

But I would think back to the things Elena had posted, and grit my teeth and push through.

On the fourteenth day, the doctor said the transfer had worked.

I held the blood-test slip, my fingers trembling.

I didn't tell Elena.

She'd already chosen her life. There was no reason for mine to be reported to her.

Three months into the pregnancy, Hilary showed off a new watch in one of his videos.

Five months in, Elena sold off the second small apartment.

Seven months in, she started complaining that Hilary was coming home later and later.

"Men are busy when they're building a business. Don't read too much into it, ladies."

She smiled through the explanation to the camera, but under her eyes there was a bruised blue that no concealer could cover.

She was still defending that "true love."

Then, the day before I checked into the hospital to deliver, she posted a video in the middle of the night.

The screen was black.

All it caught was her lowered, muffled crying.

"Hilary said he was out picking up stock. He hasn't been home in three days. There's another woman in his phone... You tell me. If a man gets drunk and sleeps with someone else, does that count as cheating?"

But soon enough, she deleted it too.

The next day, I went into the delivery room and gave birth to a boy.

My husband held me and wept with joy.

I rested at the postpartum recovery center for a month. I'd just come home when I ran into Elena, her eyes swollen like rotten peaches.

The moment she saw me, she broke down sobbing.

"Mom, Hilary really did cheat on me."

"The other woman showed up at the door, pregnant. What am I supposed to do?"