Chapter 2

The world tilted. The image on the screen burned into Sarah' s brain: Mark, tanned and carefree, his arm around Emily' s shoulders. Emily, her best friend since college, was beaming up at him, wearing a bikini Sarah recognized because she had helped her pick it out.

Her breath hitched. It couldn' t be real. It had to be a mistake, some old footage. But the news report was dated today.

She grabbed the remote, her fingers fumbling, and turned up the volume. A perky reporter' s voice filled the room. "...and here in beautiful Bali, tourists are forgetting their worries. We spoke to one happy couple, Mark and Emily, from the U.S."

The camera zoomed in. "It' s been a dream come true," Mark said, his voice smooth and happy. "A much-needed escape from the daily grind."

Emily giggled beside him. "We' ve been planning this for ages. It' s the perfect romantic getaway."

The report cut away to a scenic shot of a volcano. Sarah felt the air leave her lungs. The daily grind. Planning for ages. Romantic getaway.

She immediately tried to call Mark again. Straight to voicemail. Then she called Emily. Also straight to voicemail. The reality of it slammed into her with the force of a physical blow. They were together. On vacation. While she was here, giving birth to their children.

"Sarah?" Liam' s voice cut through the fog.

She looked up and saw him standing there, his face a grim, unreadable mask. The nurses were busy with the babies, giving them their first checkups, their backs to the television.

"Are you alright?" he asked, his tone less harsh than before.

She couldn' t speak. She just pointed a trembling finger at the TV screen, where a different story was now playing.

Liam' s gaze followed hers. He hadn' t seen it. He just saw her pale face, the tears starting to stream down her cheeks. He stepped closer, his brow furrowed. "The nanny service. What was that about?"

"He cancelled it," she whispered, the words barely audible. "He took the money."

A sudden, horrible thought struck her. The savings. They had a joint savings account, money she had painstakingly put away from her salary for the babies. For the house. She fumbled with her phone again, her hands shaking so much she could barely type in her password. She pulled up her banking app.

The balance was a hundred and twelve dollars.

It had been over eighty thousand.

She let out a small, strangled sound. He had drained it. He had taken every last cent she had saved and used it to go on vacation with her best friend.

Her phone rang again, vibrating violently against the bedsheets. It was her mother-in-law. Sarah stared at it, her heart pounding with a mixture of dread and a desperate, foolish hope that she would have an explanation. She answered.

"Sarah? I was just thinking," her mother-in-law began, her voice still bright and cheerful. "Have the babies arrived yet? Is it a boy? Mark always wanted a boy to carry on the Peterson name."

The question was so callous, so disconnected from Sarah' s reality, that for a moment, she was stunned into silence.

"They' re here," Sarah finally said, her voice flat and dead. "Two girls."

There was a beat of silence on the other end of the line. The warmth in her mother-in-law' s voice vanished, replaced by a cool disappointment.

"Oh," she said. "Girls. Well. That' s... fine, I suppose."

"Mark isn' t here," Sarah said, the words tasting like ash. "He' s in Bali. With Emily."

Another pause. "Emily? Your friend Emily? Well, I' m sure there' s a reasonable explanation. Maybe it' s a work trip."

"He told the news it was a romantic getaway," Sarah said, her voice breaking. "He drained our savings account to pay for it. He cancelled the nanny I booked. I have nothing, and I have two newborn babies."

"Now, Sarah, don' t be hysterical," her mother-in-law snapped, her tone turning sharp. "You' re probably just emotional from the childbirth. And you shouldn' t have been so careless with your money. A woman should know her place. It' s a man' s money to manage."

The hypocrisy was staggering. Sarah knew for a fact that her mother-in-law controlled every penny of her husband' s pension.

"And frankly," she continued, her voice dripping with disdain, "if you can' t even give my son a boy, you can' t expect him to stick around forever. You need to learn to be more accommodating. Now, I have to get back to my party. You figure this out."

The line clicked dead for the second time. Sarah let the phone drop. The betrayal was complete. It wasn't just her husband. It was his whole family. It was her best friend. Everyone she thought she could count on had abandoned her. The full weight of her isolation crashed down on her, and a sob escaped her lips, raw and full of pain.