Chapter 2

The room went still.

Color drained from Mark’s face. First red, then white, then a sick gray.

But he recovered quickly.

He didn’t panic. He didn’t explain.

Instead, he stepped toward me, staring me down as he forced his anger low.

“Eileen? What are you doing here? Did you follow me?”

Riley froze.

She looked at Mark, then at me. Her lips parted.

“Mark… who is she?”

For one second, she looked as if she had said too much. She lifted a hand to cover her mouth.

“Oh my God.”

Her eyes widened as she looked at me.

“She can’t be your wife, can she?”

The surprise came too perfectly, every bit of it displayed on her face.

Mark moved in front of her at once.

“Riley, don’t listen to her.”

Riley caught his sleeve. Her eyes filled with tears so quickly they looked rehearsed.

“Eileen, I’m sorry. I thought you two were only still living under the same roof because of your daughter.”

Mark turned to me as if I were the one who had broken into someone else’s home.

“Eileen and I have been over for a long time. We only live in the same house. We barely speak.”

Then his voice turned colder.

“Riley, don’t listen to her. She’s been under a lot of stress lately. She sees anyone as a threat to her marriage. She’s jealous because you’re young, so she followed me here and decided to make a scene. Stay behind me. She won’t touch you.”

In a few sentences, he turned me into the unstable woman barging into someone else’s happiness.

Then he looked back at me.

“Be honest, Eileen. Without my income all these years, could you have lived the way you do now?”

“And what good is this little performance going to do our daughter?”

He sounded so certain.

As if he had not cheated, lied, and moved our money into this house.

As if I were the one at fault.

I didn’t scream. I didn’t lunge at either of them.

I walked to the island and gathered the Target and Whole Foods receipts, one by one, into my handbag.

Mark frowned. For the first time, something uneasy crossed his face.

“What are you taking those for?”

I smoothed the receipts flat.

“There’s a cashback app. You scan grocery receipts for points.”

He blinked, then laughed as if he had finally relaxed.

“See, Riley?”

He nodded toward the receipts in my hand.

“That’s Eileen. She walks into a house like this and the first thing she thinks about is a few cents in rewards.”

He put an arm around Riley’s shoulders, his contempt growing bolder.

“Live with her long enough and you’ll see. A dinner bill, an electric bill that goes up a few dollars—she can complain about it for days.”

“What kind of life is that?”

I said nothing.

I tucked the receipts into my bag and zipped it closed.

Then I picked up my coat by the door and walked out.

The door shut behind me.

I sat in my car without starting it.

The receipts lay across the passenger seat.

Every transaction carried the same last four digits.

My card.

The card Mark had always assumed I would never examine closely.

Twenty minutes later, I was home with my laptop open.

My daughter called from upstairs.

“Mom? Can you come up here for a second?”

When I entered her room, she was sitting on her bed, scrolling through her phone.

On the screen was a pink formal dress.

The skirt glittered with tiny beads, like starlight on water.

“A lot of girls in my class are looking at this one.” She held the phone out to me. “I know it’s expensive, but can we get it? I can stop buying coffee. I can pack my lunch.”

I looked at the price.

Three hundred and twenty-nine dollars.

Before, I would not have hesitated.

But the mortgage had come out that morning. Car insurance was due soon. A few days earlier, Mark had said his company bonus had been delayed and told me to be careful with money this month.

I stared at our account balance for a long time.

“Can we wait a little?” I finally said. “When your dad’s bonus comes in, we’ll buy it.”

The light in her face dimmed.

“Again.”

She took back her phone and rolled over with her back to me.

“Forget it. It’s not like I have to have it.”

I stood in the doorway, my throat tight.

The bills on the kitchen table had been pressing on me for a month.

I couldn’t even bring myself to look at the dress price again.

But she had already put in her earbuds. She didn’t want to hear me.

Back downstairs, I opened the shared credit-card statement.

At first, I only wanted to see how much Mark had spent on Riley.

Then my finger stopped moving.

The same day.

The same afternoon.

Two hours after I told my daughter we had to wait for her dress, Mark’s card had been charged three hundred and fifty dollars at a beauty salon.

The note read:

[Glow Membership]

While my daughter waited for her father’s bonus, Mark had bought Riley a three-hundred-and-fifty-dollar beauty membership.

I opened the refrigerator.

Half a carton of milk. A few eggs. Frozen pizza my daughter didn’t even like.

The day before, I had compared two brands of milk at the grocery store and bought the cheaper one.

Riley’s receipts listed flowers and steak, two boxes of imported strawberries, a bottle of champagne, and a bag of organic snacks I never let myself buy.

I leaned against the refrigerator door and almost laughed.

Every dollar I had saved had gone into Riley’s life.

At eleven that night, Mark came home.

He opened our bedroom door with his usual impatient, controlling tone.

“Eileen, what happened today ends today. Don’t go making trouble at the school. Our daughter is applying to college. She doesn’t need more stress.”

“The mortgage, the car payment, her tuition—do you think any of that is free? If we divorce, you can’t even cover this month’s bills.”

He folded his arms, certain that our daughter and our expenses would make me swallow this whole.

I looked at him and said nothing.

He thought he had found my weak spot.

After Mark fell asleep, I opened our daughter’s Instagram.

Her newest post had gone up an hour earlier.

She was wearing a beautiful pink formal dress, smiling brighter than I had seen in weeks.

Behind her, Riley stood with one hand at her waist, carefully smoothing the skirt.

The caption read:

[Thank you, Riley, for helping me find the perfect formal dress! You’re the sweetest person I’ve ever met.]

Something inside me broke.