Chapter 2

I cleared the packaging off the floor, then went to the cabinet to dig out that sale contract.

A year and eight months ago, I had sold the house at 11 Cloud Ridge Lane with my own hands.

It was the dowry my parents gave me. My way out if I ever needed one.

But back then, Fred's mother was in the hospital, seriously ill, and money was needed fast.

To save her life, I sold that house cheap. Newly renovated, not lived in a single day, gone for four hundred thousand.

I still remember the moment all four hundred thousand landed in Fred's account.

He held me and sobbed, promising he would treat me right for the rest of his life.

That in the next life he would slave for me to repay what I'd done.

I never imagined that three months after the sale, he would move in there with his own Mrs. Walker.

I photographed the contract and studied the buyer's details.

I didn't understand this kind of thing, and it had never crossed my mind that Fred would lie to me.

Everything about the sale had been handled by him.

I never imagined a scam this big had been hiding inside it the whole time.

"Nina, look into this contract for me. Especially this buyer, Gwyneth Pruitt, and what she is to Fred."

Once my friend sent back an OK sticker,

I got up and locked the test slips away in the cabinet.

Then I picked up my ID and headed out.

The pair of door-handle covers I dropped off at the package pickup point.

To be sure it was Fred living at 11 Cloud Ridge Lane,

I used the excuse of a lost delivery to get the courier to pull the security footage from the depot Fred used most.

The moment I saw the husband I lived with day and night appear in that footage,

a sharp pain drove into my chest, and the last thread of hope I'd been holding onto disappeared.

I made it home in a daze and went straight to Fred's study.

I opened the computer and typed the password. Error.

Wrong? I tried again, a few more times.

We set that password together, he and I.

I never imagined he had quietly changed it.

I thought for a moment, then typed in a string of letters.

The computer opened.

He had actually used wasyw as his password.

He was in the habit of syncing his devices.

I opened every shopping app he used and saw order after order, packed tight down the screen.

Small things like door-handle covers, big things like a stroller, a car seat, a bedside crib.

In the past two weeks he'd placed twenty-three orders, all of it baby supplies.

Every address the same: 11 Cloud Ridge Lane.

I pulled the list down to refresh it. The earliest order was a refrigerator.

Ordered a year and seven months ago.

Back then his mother was ill, and I was at her bedside all day long, waiting on her.

He worked late every day and rarely came to the hospital.

So it turned out the late nights were only an excuse.

He'd been busy building a love nest for the other Mrs. Walker.

I saved screenshots of all of it as evidence,

then opened his messages and traced every mark left by the woman whose initials were syw.

Scrolling and scrolling, I found that this scam aimed at me

had, in fact, one other person who knew the truth.