He Secretly Married My Sister, So I Left Him and Started Over novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Zero Balance

At the condo Hazel finds her money gone, records Otto's smooth confession and walks out into the rain, where contractions start two blocks from the hospital she swore never to enter.

The condo was Otto's name on the lease, Otto's name on the mailbox and Otto's smell on every pillow.

I walked there from the clinic because I had forty-one dollars and nowhere else to be.

It took me forty minutes. I had to stop twice and hold the railing of a parking garage while the baby kicked.

She kicked hard. I took it as agreement.

Upstairs I pulled the duffel bag down from the closet shelf and started with the folders.

My passport. My medical license. My grandmother's wedding ring in its little cotton bag.

Then I opened the banking app on my phone to see how far forty-one dollars and a duffel bag could take me.

The savings account said $0.00.

I read it again.

My grandmother had left me her house in Worthington. I sold it in March for $212,000 and could not look at the paperwork, because the papers had her handwriting in the margins.

Otto had said, "Let me handle it, Haze. You've carried enough."

I scrolled the transfers.

March 9. $212,000. Wodehouse Holdings LLC.

It had gone out the same week he and Darla came back from what I'd been told was a Cleveland conference.

I sat down on the edge of the bed.

My hands were shaking, and they shook the way they always did, which is to say they were useless.

Then I heard his key in the front door.

I did not get up. I took out my phone, opened the voice recorder and put it in the pocket of my cardigan with the red dot lit.

In Ohio only one person in a conversation has to know it is being recorded.

I was the one.

"Hazel."

Otto came into the bedroom with his jacket over his arm and his face arranged.

He looked at the duffel. Then he looked at me, very kindly.

"Sweetheart, let's not do this tonight. You're upset and you're thirty-three weeks along. Sit with me. Let me make you tea."

"My savings account is empty," I said.

"It isn't empty. It's invested." He sat down across from me and spread his hands. "In the business. For our family. You couldn't open your own mail, Hazel. Someone had to."

"Our family."

"This family. Yours and mine and the baby's."

"And Darla's."

He closed his eyes for a moment.

"I married Darla to keep your parents from falling apart," he said. "Your mother lost one daughter. Darla was pregnant and terrified. Somebody had to hold the family together, and you weren't able to."

"On the fourteenth of February."

"Yes."

"Four days after the roof."

"I wasn't going to let you do that to yourself and then not be there after," he said gently. "You wouldn't have survived without me. You know that. I never stopped loving you."

"You told me you loved us both."

"I do."

I let that sit on the recording for a moment, because I wanted it clear on the tape.

"Did you marry her before or after you made me live for our baby?"

"After," he said. "Obviously after. Do you think I'm a monster?"

He thought it was a joke.

"Patsy would have wanted us to be practical," he added. "She'd want you to stay calm for the baby."

"Don't say her name in this apartment."

My voice came out low and flat and very steady.

He stopped.

It was the first thing I had said all day that he hadn't smoothed over.

"I froze your cards this morning," he said after a moment, in the same pleasant tone. "Only until you've calmed down. And I'll keep the money where it is. I'll pay your rent somewhere nice. Once the baby comes and everyone has had time, we can talk about how things look."

"How things look."

"For you, Hazel. For the baby. Your mother already thinks you're unwell."

I stood up.

I pulled the duffel zipper shut. I took the framed photo of my sister off the kitchen shelf on the way past it, the one where she's holding a stethoscope up.

Otto followed me to the door with his hands out.

"You have nowhere to go," he said.

"I know," I said. "That's the first honest thing you've said all year."

I walked out into the rain.

I got four blocks before the first cramp bent me over a mailbox.

It wasn't the kicking. It was low and tight, and it wrapped all the way around my back.

The next one came eight minutes later.

I was thirty-three weeks pregnant, soaked, with forty-one dollars and no insurance.

The only lit building on the street was the one I had sworn I would never walk into again.

St. Brigid's Emergency.

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