“We already sold the house. Here are two hundred dollars. Find a cheap room on the outskirts and don’t make a scene.”
My husband Christopher left the white envelope on the kitchen table as if he had just done me a massive favor. I had given birth less than three days earlier. My newborn daughter Harper was sleeping peacefully against my chest, my entire body ached from labor, and I could barely stay on my feet. Beside him, my mother-in-law Brenda watched me with a look of pure satisfaction.
“You can still find cheap basement rooms around Scranton,” Brenda added with a cold smirk. “With a newborn baby, you don’t need any great luxuries anyway.”
I reached out with a trembling hand and opened the envelope. Inside were two crisp one-hundred-dollar bills. I looked down at the paper bills for a moment, looked up at Christopher, and started laughing. I laughed so hard my sore abdomen began to throb.
Christopher frowned, narrowing his eyes. “What on earth are you laughing at?”
I held up the two green bills. “I’m laughing because you actually think these two hundred dollars can get me out of a house worth three million dollars.”
Brenda stepped forward, pointing her finger. “That house isn’t yours anymore, so stop dreaming!”
“You’re actually right about that part,” I said calmly.
Christopher smiled immediately. “Then stop making things difficult and just pack your bags.”
I looked him straight in the eyes. “But there’s one small problem. The house you just sold had already…” I stopped mid-sentence on purpose.
Christopher’s smug smile disappeared. For the first time, I saw genuine fear creeping into his eyes.
Three weeks earlier, I naively thought our marriage could be saved. Christopher and I had been married for seven years, living in a grand two-story residence in Harrisburg that had originally belonged to my late father. When he passed away, he left the entire estate exclusively to me in his will. Over the years, I invested my own money in extensive renovations. Legally speaking, it had never belonged to Christopher for a single day.
As my pregnancy progressed, Christopher started asking bizarre financial questions about property values and original deed locations, while Brenda dropped hints about resentment when one person owns everything. When I caught Christopher going through the legal filing cabinet in my father’s old office, I called Rachel Cooper, the family attorney who handled the estate.
“Nora, your husband cannot sell or mortgage this property under circumstances because it is registered solely in your maiden name,” Rachel reassured me.
“What if I sell it right now?” I asked.
Two weeks before my scheduled delivery date, I officially signed the final sale papers to a wealthy couple who owned local businesses, depositing the proceeds into secure investment accounts opened solely in my name.
Three days after signing, I overheard Christopher and Brenda in the garage discussing how to lower the listing price for a fast cash deal while I was stuck in the hospital, intending to hand me a couple hundred bucks and let me figure out where to sleep. They were calculatingly planning to render me homeless at the exact moment I brought our child into the world, still having no idea that the house they were betraying me over already belonged to someone else entirely…
