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“Ma’am, could you please drive carefully?”
“I’m pregnant.”
My hands froze around the steering wheel.
The young woman who had just climbed into the back seat of my sedan was smiling.
Her cheeks were flushed from the cold.
One hand rested protectively over the small curve of her stomach.
The other was wrapped around the arm of the man sitting beside her.
Mason.
My fiancé.
The man I had been with for five years.
The man whose wedding I had been working two jobs to pay for.
The man who had texted me less than an hour earlier.
Hey babe, working late at the office tonight.
Don’t wait up for me.
Let’s get breakfast tomorrow.
I looked at him through the rearview mirror.
His face went completely white.
For a second, I thought he might actually open the door and run.
He didn’t.
He just stared at me.
Then at the engagement ring on my hand.
Then back at me.
The woman beside him noticed.
“Everything okay?”
I looked at the navigation screen.
The destination was the Riverside Grand Hotel.
One of the most expensive hotels near the Chicago riverfront.
I shifted the car into drive.
“Yes.”
My voice sounded strangely normal.
“We’re good.”
Then I pulled away from the curb.
My name is Maya Collins.
I was thirty-one years old.
By day, I worked as an account supervisor for a regional insurance agency in downtown Chicago.
By night, I drove rideshare.
I had been doing that for almost nine months.
Monday through Thursday.
Sometimes Friday.
Often Saturday.
I did not do it because we were poor.
We were not.
I did it because I wanted our wedding to feel beautiful without putting us into debt.
Mason had proposed eleven months earlier.
Small restaurant.
Candles.
Champagne.
A solitaire diamond.
He had gotten down on one knee.
My hands shook so badly I almost knocked over my glass.
I cried.
He cried.
Everyone nearby clapped.
For weeks afterward, I could not stop staring at the ring.
Five years together.
Finally.
We started talking about venues.
Photography.
Food.
Flowers.
Music.
Everything cost more than I expected.
Mason kept saying,
“We have time.”
But I knew his savings were not strong.
His father’s business had struggled.
His mother’s house needed repairs.
Mason told me he was helping both.
So I said I would cover more of the wedding.
He resisted at first.
Then he accepted.
We opened a high-yield savings account together.
Wedding Fund.
That was the nickname.
I deposited money every month.
Sometimes two thousand.
Sometimes more.
Mason promised to match me when things improved.
I believed him.
I believed a lot of things.
