Chapter 2
I made it to a bus stop before the pain started.
At first, I told myself it was only stress.
A sharp pull low in my stomach.
Then another.
The rain had soaked through my clothes, my shoes, even my hair. Cars passed me in waves of dirty water. My suitcase sat open beside the bench because one broken wheel had snapped off halfway down the driveway.
I looked at my phone.
Nine percent.
My fingers were too cold to type properly.
I called the only person I could think of.
My mother.
She answered on the second ring.
“Maddie?”
The sound of her voice broke something inside me.
“Mom,” I said.
Then I started crying.
Not quiet tears.
Not the controlled kind I had learned to hide in the Sterling mansion.
I sobbed so hard I could barely explain where I was.
My mother did not ask questions.
She never did when love came first.
“Stay exactly where you are,” she said. “Call 911 if you have pain again. I’m coming.”
“You’re three hours away.”
“I said I’m coming.”
The next contraction hit before she ended the call.
I doubled over.
A stranger in a yellow raincoat ran toward me from across the street. She introduced herself as Denise and called an ambulance before I could protest.
By the time the paramedics arrived, my entire body was trembling.
At the hospital, they put monitors around my stomach and told me my blood pressure was dangerously high.
“Stress can trigger early labor,” the doctor said. “You and the babies need to rest.”
Rest.
The word felt cruel.
How could I rest when my husband had abandoned me?
How could I rest when my mother-in-law had built a lie around my life?
At three in the morning, my phone lit up.
Connor.
My heart jumped so hard it hurt.
I answered immediately.
“Connor?”
His voice was cold.
“I heard you went to the hospital.”
“You heard?”
“Mother called.”
Of course she had.
“I’m not well,” I said. “The babies are stressed.”
There was a pause.
Then he asked, “Were you really with Jake?”
I shut my eyes.
“I was alone in the rain, Connor. I could have gone into labor on the side of the road. And that is what you ask me?”
“I need the truth.”
“You had it. You just didn’t want it.”
He breathed heavily.
“Don’t make this harder than it already is.”
I laughed once, but it came out broken.
“Harder for you?”
He hung up.
My mother arrived before dawn with my father.
My father walked into the room in his old work jacket, looked at the IV in my arm, and began to cry.
I had not seen my father cry since his own father died.
He kissed my forehead.
“You’re coming home,” he said.
I nodded.
Then I said the words I had been afraid to say.
“Connor thinks the babies aren’t his.”
My mother’s face went pale.
My father’s jaw tightened.
“He thinks that because someone showed him fake pictures,” I continued. “Victoria did this.”
My mother sat beside me.
“Do you know for certain?”
“No. But I know her.”
My father looked toward the window.
“Then we prove it.”
Later that morning, a nurse brought in a box that had been left at the front desk.
There was no card.
Inside were the few things Connor had allowed me to leave behind.
My winter coat.
A framed wedding photo.
My favorite mug.
And a small velvet jewelry box.
I opened it expecting to see the pearl earrings Connor gave me on our first anniversary.
Instead, there was a silver key.
Under it lay a folded note.
My name was written on the front in elegant handwriting.
Victoria’s handwriting.
I opened it with shaking hands.
There was only one sentence.
You should have stayed grateful for what you were given.
I looked at my mother.
My hands had stopped trembling.
For the first time since Connor shut that door, my fear began to change.
It became anger.
Victoria wanted me ashamed.
She wanted me to disappear.
She wanted me to believe I was powerless because I did not have Sterling money.
But she had forgotten something.
I was an English teacher.
I spent my life teaching children to look closely at what people said, what they hid, and what they meant.
May you like
And that note meant one thing.
Victoria believed she had won.
