Chapter 2

I snatched the phone from his hand and stared hard at the image. That made no sense. Harry was still fighting for his life when I left the hospital—I never even dropped him off at school. Yet, looking at that picture on Calvin's phone, I felt like the whole world was playing a sick joke on me. My heart sank as I remembered I had rushed out without bringing any of the paperwork or medical records with me, so I had no proof. I mumbled, "No... No way. Cal, that photo has to be fake. Harry didn't make it to school this morning. He got into an accident on the way." Calvin scoffed and shot me a look full of disdain. "Fake? Why would his homeroom teacher, Ms. Carol Smith, send me a fake photo? If you want to scam money out of me, at least come up with a better excuse." Before I could say anything else, a sharp scream and the crash of a wheelchair echoed from outside the living room. "Cal..." Calvin's attention was immediately shifted. His face filled with panic as he turned to run toward Sheena. I threw aside my crutches and grabbed his wrist with both hands, my voice trembling as I begged him. "Harry's really in the ER. He's hanging on by a thread, and we need money now. Please, Cal, believe me!" Tears streaked down my cheeks, and for a second, he hesitated. He even stopped moving. "Cal... It hurts..." But the second Sheena cried out in pain, all the doubt vanished from his face. His expression turned cold as he peeled my fingers off one by one. "Did you seriously make up a whole car crash and use Harry to manipulate me just to get attention? That's low, even for you." I stared at his back as he walked away without even looking back, and it felt like a thousand knives were stabbing straight into my chest. The day Sheena first moved into the Fuller residence, Calvin threw all my bedding out of the master bedroom. "You'll sleep in the guest room next to Sheena. If she needs anything—anything at all—you better be there in seconds. This is your fault—you'll make it right." I had just given birth. My body was still wrecked from the delivery and from nearly bleeding out, but I never got to rest. I did not get a real postpartum recovery. Instead, I dragged my broken body out of bed every night to tend to Sheena's every whim. As Calvin's wife, I never got a single day off. Meanwhile, Sheena was treated like a princess. Her room overflowed with fine jewelry and designer dresses. Even though she could not walk, Calvin still bought her hundreds of pairs of expensive shoes, which filled three entire closets. I remember our first wedding anniversary after Harry was born. I knocked on Calvin's door and whispered, "Tomorrow's our wedding anniversary. Can I have just one day off?" "Sure," Calvin agreed. But what he meant by a "day off" was pushing Sheena's wheelchair around an amusement park. They took cute couple selfies and fed each other snacks like lovebirds—they looked just like husband and wife. And me? I was nothing but their help—cheap, invisible, and completely disposable. Maybe to Calvin, I was never his wife at all, but I was just a convenient little caretaker. Ignoring the searing pain in my legs, I dragged myself back to the bedroom on my hands and knees and yanked open the drawer. Inside was an old, worn jewelry box, and inside that box was a single diamond ring—plain, but perfectly preserved.