Chapter 1

1: 1

My son suddenly announced he wanted to go to boarding school.

"Ever since Dad died, Mom, you've had all four of the old folks to take care of by yourself, and me on top of that. It's just too much for you."

"I've already got the boarding school arranged. After dinner I'll take a car over on my own. You just remember to send me my living money on time."

My whole face warmed with relief. My boy had finally grown up, I thought—and then a row of comments came drifting across my vision.

【No! He's not going to boarding school to lighten your load. He's going so he can fake evidence that you abused him and threw him out of the house!】

【Your husband isn't dead either. He's hiding out with his old flame, waiting for your own son to nail you as mentally ill with fabricated proof!】

【Then they'll have you committed to a psychiatric hospital, where the orderlies will torture you to death, while he runs off to that pair of adulterers with your inheritance!】

【Even your parents' retirement savings will be conned out of them, under the excuse of paying your medical bills, until they're left picking through trash to survive!】

The chopsticks slipped from my fingers and clattered to the floor. I picked them up as if nothing were wrong and reached over to ruffle my son's hair.

"Since it's your first time boarding, how could I let you go by yourself?"

"After dinner, I'll go with you and help you check in."

……

"That's okay, Mom. Everyone goes on their own. If I'm the only one with a parent dropping him off, that's kind of embarrassing…"

My son refused right away.

Before, I would surely have thought he'd grown up, that he was being considerate.

But now, watching those rolling lines of comments in front of me, all I felt was a cold dread.

"It's fine. Other people are other people. You're you."

"It's your first time at boarding school. I won't feel easy about it otherwise."

My son wanted to say something more, but I'd already stood to go wash the dishes.

Seeing that, he immediately grabbed the bowls and chopsticks and rushed for the kitchen.

Not only did he wash up quickly, he wouldn't even let me help pack his bags.

Watching him bustle back and forth, I sank into thought.

Would my son really do what the comments said—frame me, have me committed to a psychiatric hospital?

Was my husband, Sebastian James, not dead at all, but off with his old flame, waiting for our son to pull it off so he could con me out of my money and vanish for good?

No. I didn't believe it.

For one thing, Sebastian and I had been married twenty years, and he'd doted on me like I was the apple of his eye.

He didn't have any old flame at all.

We were each other's first love, from schooldays to the wedding dress, more than twenty years of devotion.

If it hadn't been for that sudden car crash, if he hadn't shielded me with his own body, he wouldn't have died on the spot the way he did.

And my son, even more so.

Top of his class, obedient, sensible.

Plenty of friends and relatives had come to me asking how I raised him.

How could he possibly team up with his father and some other woman to have me locked away in a psychiatric hospital?

Someone had to be playing a joke on me.

I drew a deep breath, and noticed my son had left his asthma medicine on the dinner table.

I picked up the bottle to take it to him. In the bedroom, just one door away, his voice suddenly dropped low.

"Don't get me started. That old woman's lost her mind today, insisting on taking me to boarding school herself."

"Grandma, in a bit you call her and say Grandpa's having a heart attack, that she needs to take him to the hospital…"

My head went off like a bomb.

The comments were actually telling the truth!

My hands shook with rage, and before I knew it I'd shoved the door open.

My son quickly hid his phone, looking at me with guilt written all over his face.

Just as the demand rose to my lips, the comments began to scroll again.

【Don't ask! Your son has hidden cameras in every corner of the house, all to record your every move.】

【Blow up now and you're handing him ammunition!】

【Keep him calm first. Find your husband, the one faking his death!】

My gaze landed on the little blinking red light in the corner, and I forced the anger back down.

I dragged a smile onto the corner of my mouth and held the medicine out.

"You silly boy, always so careless with your things."

"What if you got to school and realized you'd left your medicine behind? What would you do if an asthma attack hit?"