His Cruel Allowance Game Cost Him His Wife and Heir novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: A Gift Bag and Two Officers

Rodrigo and his mother bring police to her friend's door. Alma films the welfare check, the officers leave, and a legal-aid lawyer tells her to bring every envelope.

The knock came at seven on Monday morning, and it was not a neighbor's knock.

My friend's apartment had one bedroom, one couch and a hallway thin enough that every door on the floor could hear it.

I was on the couch with Camila on my chest, trying to get her to take the bottle.

"Police," a man's voice said. "We're doing a welfare check on an infant."

My friend looked at me, and then she looked at the peephole.

"It's your husband," she whispered. "And his mother. And two officers."

I put the bottle down.

Every door in the hallway had opened a crack.

I knew what Rodrigo wanted.

He wanted me to open the door in tears, with a baby crying and my hair a mess, so his mother could say she had warned everyone.

I opened my phone and started recording.

Then I unlatched the chain and opened the door as far as the chain would let me.

"Good morning, ma'am," the first officer said. "Your family is concerned. Can we see the baby?"

"Of course," I said, and held her up to the gap.

Camila blinked at him and burped.

Behind the officers, Rodrigo had put on the grey suit he wore to funerals.

"Alma, please," he said, loud enough for the whole hallway. "You just had surgery. You're not thinking clearly. Let us take her home where she's safe."

Soledad stood at his shoulder with a gift bag and a face full of pity.

"She's been so emotional, officer," she said. "She tore up a family dinner over forty dollars."

I heard a door open wider down the hall.

"Forty dollars," a woman said, not softly. "Over a baby?"

The second officer looked at the cans of formula lined up on the kitchen counter behind me.

He looked at the hospital bracelet still on my wrist.

"Ma'am, are you fed? Do you have what you need for her?"

"I have formula," I said. "I bought it with the forty dollars from the envelope."

"What envelope?" the first officer asked.

So I told him.

I told him in one flat minute, in front of the neighbors, with the phone still recording.

Ten envelopes. One pays. Thirty-one months.

Rodrigo's smile went stiff.

"It's a family tradition," he said. "A joke. She's twisting it."

"A joke where your wife gets hungry?" the second officer said.

He closed his notebook.

"The baby's fed, she's clean and her mother is awake and sober. There's nothing here for us. If you want custody, sir, that's the court."

The first officer touched his cap to me, and they went back down the stairs.

Rodrigo didn't move.

"You're going to regret making a spectacle of my family," he said, very low.

Soledad leaned in past him and laid the gift bag on my doormat.

"Open it later, dear," she said.

I didn't wait.

Inside was a pink knit hat, a pacifier, and a printed page with a lawyer's name across the top.

Petition for emergency custody.

It was dated yesterday, the day I walked out.

Soledad smiled and patted the doorframe.

"You have a week to come home on your own terms," she said. "After that, we do it ours. You've got forty dollars and no card. Count it again."

They left.

The woman down the hall walked over and put a hand on my shoulder.

"I filmed all of it, honey," she said. "You want me to send it to you?"

I told her yes and thanked her, and then I closed the door and slid down it to the floor.

Camila started to cry.

My friend picked her up and walked her around the room, and I sat there with a petition in my lap that I did not know how to read.

I had no card, no savings, no job, and a week.

On the refrigerator, under a pizza magnet, was a yellow flyer.

Free legal help. Family law. Saturdays, and a number for weekdays.

My friend had been given it years ago by a coworker with a bad divorce.

I took it down and dialed with my thumb shaking.

It rang four times, and then a man picked up and said, "Cardenas."

He sounded like he had been asleep in his chair.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I think I have the wrong number. I was looking for the free clinic."

"This is the clinic's weekday line. It forwards to me." Paper rustled. "What's the matter?"

I said, "My husband's family just served me with an emergency custody petition. All I have is forty dollars and ten envelopes from a game he made me play."

He was quiet for a second.

"Did he serve it with a police officer?"

"Yes."

"And a gift bag?"

I stared at the pink hat in my hand.

"How did you know that?"

"I've seen that move three times," the man said. "A pretty gift on top, and the court papers underneath. Don't sign anything. Don't answer the door again without recording."

Then he said, "And bring every one of those envelopes to me on Saturday."

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