I took one step closer.
“Who’s there, Nathan?”
His face went pale.
“Tell me.”
He said nothing.
I looked at Margaret.
“You know.”
She swallowed.
Then, for the first time since I had met her, my mother-in-law looked genuinely frightened.
And that was when I heard a sound from downstairs.
A woman’s voice.
“Hello?”
Everyone froze.
I looked toward the bedroom door.
Margaret’s face lost all its color.
Nathan whispered one word.
“No.”
The woman’s voice came again.
“Nathan?”
I looked at my husband.
Then at his mother.
Then toward the stairs.
And suddenly I understood why they had been so desperate to keep me away from my own finances.
Someone else was living inside the life I thought belonged to me.
And she had just walked into my house.
