Chapter 1 - THE MONEY HE GAVE AWAY
The moment I hit the water, my daughter stopped moving.
One second I was eight months pregnant beside a swimming pool in North Raleigh, surrounded by pink balloons, paper lanterns, and relatives balancing barbecue plates on their knees.
The next, I was underwater.
My maternity dress ballooned around my legs. The edge of the pool had caught the right side of my back before I fell, and a hard band of pain tightened across my abdomen.
Above the surface, faces distorted through rippling blue water.
Eric stood closest.
My husband still had one hand stretched toward his mother.
Diane was clutching the navy First Citizens Bank envelope he had just given her.
Twenty-three thousand dollars.
Every dollar I had put aside for the hospital deductible, my unpaid maternity leave, emergency expenses, and the weeks after our daughter came home.
I kicked toward the surface.
My shoe came off.
When my face finally broke through the water, I heard somebody screaming.
It took me a second to realize it was me.
“Help me.”
People had frozen around the pool.
Eric’s sister, Lauren, had both hands over her mouth. Diane held the envelope against her white linen dress as though the water might somehow reach up and take it back.
“Eric!”
I slapped at the surface.
“My stomach.”
Then Lauren’s husband, Mark, dropped his beer and jumped in.
He reached me before Eric moved.
Mark hooked one arm under my shoulders while another guest grabbed the pool skimmer and pushed it toward us.
“Don’t pull her by the stomach,” somebody yelled.
“I know.”
“Call 911.”
“I’m calling.”
Eric finally crouched at the pool edge.
“What the hell happened?”
I stared at him.
Ten seconds earlier, he had been shouting at me.
Ten seconds earlier, Diane had been saying that a decent wife would be happy to help her husband’s mother.
Ten seconds earlier, I had learned that Eric had gone to our bank that morning, drained the maternity savings account I had funded almost entirely by myself, and purchased a cashier’s check payable to Diane Carter.
He had announced it at my baby shower as if he were donating a raffle prize.
“Mom’s landlord is selling her place,” he had said, lifting his glass. “So Maya and I are helping her out.”
The conversations around the patio had quieted.
I had stared at him.
“What did you say?”
Eric had smiled too widely.
“We’re helping Mom.”
Diane had begun crying on cue.
“I didn’t want anybody to know.”
That was the moment something inside me had gone still.
Diane didn’t have a landlord.
Her late husband had paid off the small brick ranch in Cary eleven years earlier. I knew because Eric and I had helped her refinance the final balance before his father died.
“What’s in the envelope?” I asked.
Eric hesitated.
That hesitation told me everything.
I stood.
At eight months pregnant, standing quickly had become a two-step process. One hand on the chair. One on my belly.
“Eric.”
“Not now.”
“Open it.”
“Maya.”
“Open the envelope.”
Diane hugged it to her chest.
Lauren sighed loudly. “Can we not do this today?”
“This is my baby shower.”
“And Mom is having a crisis.”
“She owns her house.”
Diane’s crying stopped.
Only for a second.
But I saw it.
So did Mark.
Eric’s face changed.
“Stop embarrassing me.”
“I’m asking where twenty-three thousand dollars went.”
A few people looked away.
Eric leaned closer.
“You don’t get to interrogate my mother in front of everybody.”
“I’m not interrogating her. I’m asking why you emptied our delivery account.”
“Our account.”
“I funded it.”
“There it is.”
He laughed once and looked around at his family.
“There’s Maya. Always keeping score.”
I reached for the envelope.
Eric jerked it away.
Lauren stepped between us.
Diane said, “A good wife wouldn’t make her husband beg to help his own mother.”
“I’m not discussing my marriage with you.”
“You just did.”
“Give me the check.”
Eric lifted the envelope over my reach.
I stepped around Lauren.
Somebody’s foot moved behind mine.
Or maybe somebody bumped my shoulder.
Or maybe my heel simply found the narrow strip of pool water that had been splashed onto the stone.
I never knew.
My balance disappeared.
Then came the pool edge.
Then the water.
Now Mark was hauling me toward the stairs.
I tried to help him, but another cramp seized low in my abdomen.
“Maya?” Mark said. “Look at me.”
“My baby.”
“We’re getting you out.”
“My baby isn’t moving.”
Eric stood above us.
“Babies don’t move every second.”
I looked down.
A pink cloud was spreading through the water beneath my dress.
Mark saw it too.
His face drained.
“Eric, get back.”
“What?”
“Get back and let them through.”
Sirens were already approaching.
Everything after that happened in broken pictures.
Paramedics cutting away part of my soaked dress.
A blood pressure cuff squeezing my arm.
An oxygen mask.
Eric arguing because one of the paramedics cut through his expensive shirt when I wouldn’t release my fist from the fabric.
The ceiling of the ambulance.
My hand moving over my belly again and again.
Nothing.
At WakeMed, nurses moved faster than anyone explained.
A doctor with dark hair and a calm voice pressed an ultrasound probe against me.
Her name tag read PATEL.
She watched the screen for less than fifteen seconds.
“We have a fetal heartbeat,” she said.
I started crying.
Then she added, “But we need to move now.”
“What’s wrong?”
“You’re bleeding behind the placenta. I believe you’re having a placental abruption.”
“Is she okay?”
“We need to deliver your baby.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
Someone handed me a consent form.
Another nurse took my jewelry.
Eric appeared in the doorway.
“You’re doing a C-section?”
Dr. Patel looked at him.
“Yes.”
“Can’t you wait?”
“No.”
“We were planning a natural birth.”
“We’re no longer discussing a birth plan.”
Eric blinked as if she had insulted him.
I reached for him anyway.
“Come with me.”
He looked down at my wet hair, the blood on the sheet, the people rushing around us.
“I need to call Mom.”
That was the last thing he said before they wheeled me away.
Our daughter was born twelve minutes later.
Four pounds, three ounces.
Silent.
Blue around the mouth.
I saw her only once before a neonatal team carried her through another door.
“Nora,” I whispered.
A nurse bent closer.
“What?”
“Her name is Nora.”
Then the medication pulled me under.
When I woke, my mouth was dry and my abdomen felt as if someone had sewn fire beneath my skin.
My mother, Helen, was sitting beside the bed.
She had driven from Greensboro so quickly she was still wearing gardening shoes.
“Nora?” I asked.
“NICU.”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes.
“Eric?”
My mother looked toward the door.
“Outside.”
“Why?”
Her lips tightened.
“He said he needed some air.”
I heard his voice before she finished.
The door wasn’t completely closed.
Neither Eric nor Diane knew I was awake.
“You should go home,” Eric said.
“I can’t go home with this hanging over me.”
“Then deposit it tomorrow.”
My fingers curled around the sheet.
Diane lowered her voice.
“You said this was supposed to look voluntary.”
“It did until she made a scene.”
“She almost lost the baby.”
“Nobody pushed her.”
“I didn’t say anybody did.”
A pause.
Then Diane asked, “Did you transfer the rest?”
My eyes opened.
Eric answered quietly.
“Tomorrow.”
I reached for the phone on my bedside table.
The movement tore through my incision, but I kept going.
My screen lit.
There was a banking notification from twelve minutes earlier.
A transfer request had been initiated from Bennett Forensic Consulting LLC.
$61,800.
Destination:
CARTER FAMILY HOUSING LLC.
Approval pending.
I stared at the amount.
Then at the name.
Diane’s voice came from the hallway again.
“Once the rest is moved, she can’t undo this.”
My thumb hovered over the fraud-alert button.
May you like
For the first time since the pool, I stopped thinking about whether my husband had betrayed me.
I started wondering how long he had been planning it.
