He wasn’t moving Maya into my house to build a family. He was moving her in to occupy me, to force a messy domestic dispute that would distract me just long enough for the wire to clear. He was going to take my equity, abandon his mistress, abandon his two children, and disappear to Central America with a girl a decade younger than him.
My phone buzzed on the desk. A text from Maya.
“Kate. I found something in his coat pocket. He’s leaving us both. If you don’t meet me right now, we are both going to lose everything.”
I met Maya at a dingy, fluorescent-lit café near the regional transit hub. It was the kind of place that smelled of burnt espresso and desperation. I chose it purposely; I wanted her far away from the comforts of my home.
She was sitting in a corner booth, looking like a ghost. The polished, smug woman who had been arranging diapers on my coffee table twenty-four hours ago had vanished. In her place was a terrified, exhausted girl with dark circles under her eyes, bouncing the youngest baby on her knee while the toddler slept in a battered stroller.
I slid into the vinyl booth across from her, ordering nothing. I just stared at her, letting the silence wrap around her throat.
“He told me you knew,” Maya whispered, her voice cracking. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “He told me you two were already separated. That the house was legally his, and you were just staying for the optics. He said you hated children.”
“And you, my own cousin, honestly believed that?” My tone was lethal, devoid of any warmth.
Maya swallowed hard, a tear spilling over her lashes. “I… I knew it probably wasn’t true. But I desperately wanted to believe him. Because it was easier than facing the fact that I was the other woman. When I got pregnant the second time, he tried to dump me. But then he came up with this plan. He said if we moved in, the shock would force you to file for divorce and abandon the house, giving him leverage.”
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