Chapter 1

Seven days before Christmas, I came home early and found my husband’s pregnant mistress in my kitchen.

Vanessa Cole was wearing my robe and drinking coffee from my favorite mug.

My husband, Jason, had already given her a key to our house.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

Vanessa looked at me as if I were the intruder.

“I live here now.”

On the kitchen counter, beside my coffee machine, lay an ultrasound photograph.

Vanessa pushed it toward me.

“Twelve weeks,” she said. “The baby is Jason’s.”

My husband had been sleeping with his coworker. She was pregnant, and the two of them had moved her into my home before telling me.

I looked toward the Christmas tree.

The photographs of Jason and me had been removed. My mother’s handmade ornaments had been thrown into a cardboard box beside the fireplace.

Then Jason came downstairs carrying my clothes.

He dropped them onto the sofa. Some were still on hangers. The rest had been stuffed into black garbage bags.

“You were supposed to work until six,” he said.

“That’s all you have to say?”

Jason glanced at Vanessa, then back at me.

“I love her, Emma.”

He did not apologize.

“Vanessa is pregnant. She needs a stable home before the baby comes. We’re getting married after our divorce.”

Vanessa placed one hand over her stomach.

I stared at the man I had been married to for ten years.

“You’re giving our house to your mistress?”

“This house is in my name,” Jason said. “And Vanessa and the baby need it more than you do.”

“This is my home too.”

His expression hardened.

“This house needs a real family.”

That sentence hurt more than the ultrasound photograph.

For ten years, I had cooked his meals, paid our utilities, bought our furniture and decorated this house every Christmas. Now Jason had decided that his pregnant mistress was his real family—and I was something that needed to be removed.

He picked up a thick envelope from the dining table.

“These are the divorce papers. You give up any claim to the house, and I take the mortgage and every debt attached to it. You leave tonight with whatever fits in two suitcases.”

“You prepared an agreement before telling me about the affair?”

“I’m trying to make this easy.”

“For whom?”

Jason did not answer.

Vanessa picked up my mug again. “The furniture should stay. We’ll need it after the baby comes.”

She was asking to keep the furniture I had bought while standing in the kitchen I had cleaned, wearing the robe Jason had given me for our anniversary.

“I’m not signing anything today,” I said.

Jason’s jaw tightened. “You don’t pay the mortgage. There’s no reason for you to fight over the house.”

“I want a lawyer to read the agreement.”

“If you make this difficult, I’ll remove you from the car insurance tonight.”

He wanted me frightened, homeless and desperate enough to sign without asking questions.

I looked at the agreement.

“Give me three days.”

“You have until noon tomorrow.”

“I’m taking my mother’s things.”

Jason pointed at the two suitcases he had placed near the stairs.

“Take whatever fits in those. Vanessa wants the rest of the house cleared tonight.”

Two suitcases.

That was all my husband believed ten years of marriage was worth.

I packed my work clothes, my laptop and a photograph of my mother. From the box beside the fireplace, I recovered her wooden Christmas angel. One wing had cracked.

Jason had repaired that same wing during our first Christmas as husband and wife.

Now he watched me wrap it in a sweater without saying a word.

At the bottom of the box, I found a charity raffle ticket I had bought at the Christmas market three months earlier. The prize was a furnished house by the ocean.

I had forgotten I owned it.

I slipped it into my laptop case.

That night, I stayed in my coworker Sarah’s guest room.

The television was playing an advertisement for the raffle.

“Tomorrow night,” the announcer said, “we’ll reveal the winner of this year’s coastal dream home.”

Suddenly, my phone buzzed.

Jason had sent me a photograph.

Vanessa was standing in front of my Christmas tree, still wearing my robe.

His message said:

Sign by noon tomorrow. After that, this house has nothing to do with you.

I placed the raffle ticket beside the divorce agreement.

By noon tomorrow, I had to decide whether to sign away my home forever.