Chapter 1
On the fifth day of my husband David Brooks's business trip, his distant cousin sent me three hundred dollars out of nowhere.
She sent a few voice messages with it.
Cousin: [Emily, I saw the obituary David posted. I'm still recovering from childbirth, so I can't make it to your father's funeral. Think about your child. Please take care of yourself and stay strong.]
I froze.
My heart clenched, and my fingers shook as I opened David's feed.
The most recent post was from a week earlier, my dad's birthday dinner.
My dad was alive and well, so there was no funeral, and David and I had never had children, so there was no child either.
I pushed the panic down and answered her with a couple of short lines.
Then I used a dummy account to add David on social media, and the obituary was right there.
I drove three hours to the funeral without stopping to think about it.
In the middle of that solemn funeral hall, I met the other woman who appeared as David's wife on his page.
Her eyes were red when she looked at me, and her voice caught.
"You're one of my husband's relatives, aren't you? Thank you so much for taking the time to come to my father's funeral."
Everything in me went over sideways, and I looked her up and down.
She wore an expensive black mourning dress with light makeup, and anybody could see she had the time and money to take care of herself.
I tried to steady myself, and my voice came out shaking anyway.
"Where is David Brooks?"
"He is..." She did not finish it.
"Mommy!"
A boy of five or six threw himself into her arms before she could get the rest out.
My breath stopped in my throat.
That face was a smaller copy of David's.
Doing the math, I had been married five years, which meant David had been running two women at once the entire time.
Did she even know I existed?
Which one of us was the mistress?
After we got married, David suggested we stay childfree, saying he didn't want me to go through the hardship of raising kids.
His family never pressured me about it.
I was always touched by how responsible he seemed.
And the truth was that he had a son with another woman, and the boy was already five or six.
Susan crouched down and smoothed Henry's hair.
Her face was pale, and she managed a small smile anyway.
"Henry, good boy. Mommy still has things to do. Go find Grandma."
My heart jumped, because that meant David's mother, Lilian Brooks, knew about all of it, too.
Henry nodded and ran over to an older woman.
It was Lilian, the one who was supposed to have been bedridden for years.
She was holding Henry and moving fast on her feet, full of energy.
Ever since I first met her, she'd always looked frail and sickly.
She took more medicine than food every day and was practically a regular at the hospital.
The reimbursement claims David brought me had piled up like a mountain.
The color went out of my face, and my voice shook as I tried to sound casual. "She looks like she's in great health."
Susan didn't notice anything off about me. She sighed, her voice full of gratitude.
"She treats me like her own daughter, and she's the one who raised Henry.
"I don't have a job, so she gives me 6,700 dollars a month for living expenses."
My heart clenched, and I felt like I couldn't breathe.
David was the one who joined my family after marriage.
Not long after the wedding he had surgery for a severe herniated disc.
After that, he stayed home, taking care of the house and doing all the housework.
I was the one working myself to the bone, traveling for business and pulling endless overtime just to keep us afloat.
I worked my way up from director to president, and my salary skyrocketed.
David's father passed away early, so he and his mother relied on each other.
To put his mind at ease, I suggested bringing Lilian to live with us several times, but he always found reasons to refuse.
So every month I transferred 7,300 dollars to her for her medical costs and her living expenses.
And all of it had gone to feeding that woman and her child.
There were a lot of guests at the funeral.
Susan didn't notice my emotional turmoil and brought me over to David Brooks's relatives.
I looked at their faces, and every single one of them was a stranger to me, but all of them treated Susan like family.
"Susan, you're the apple of David's eye," one of them said.
"For his sake and the kid's, you really need to take care of yourself."
Susan gave a wry smile, her left hand resting on her belly.
"Don't worry, I will," she replied.
She was pregnant with a second one.
I clenched my fists so hard that my nails dug into my palms, but I couldn't even feel the pain.
David always used the excuse that his hometown was too far away, so we just had a small ceremony for our wedding.
After we married, he never once mentioned a relative.
I'd had my doubts.
He'd always let out a heavy sigh and tell me his dad passed away early, and that his relatives treated him and his mom terribly.
So naturally, he said there was no point in staying in contact.
It was only now that I understood. Those relatives had not been keeping their distance from him.
They had been kept away from me.
In their eyes, Susan was the only woman they recognized as David's wife.
I wanted to know how deep the whole thing went.