Chapter 1

“Ma’am, I’ve counted these twice. Out of your twenty thousand dollars, only the top two thousand are real. The rest are counterfeit.”

I stood at the counter, clutching the receipt in my hand.

My mind was buzzing.

“This money is a cash gift from my wedding. How could there be counterfeit?”

My hands began to tremble.

My father, Bryan Roche, was still lying in the hospital. He needed the money for the surgery.

But the bank teller had counted it twice in front of me.

It was a total of eighteen thousand dollars in counterfeit bills.

I had been married to Peter Grant for one year.

The cash gift was twenty thousand dollars in total.

We had agreed back then to keep the money untouched and only take it out when we needed it urgently.

My father had been diagnosed with early-stage liver cancer.

The doctor said surgery plus chemotherapy would cost at least thirty thousand dollars in total.

My mother and I added up all the money we had at home.

We were still short by eighteen thousand dollars.

That was when I remembered the cash gift I got from the wedding.

I took it out of the bank safe deposit box that same night.

I went to the bank first thing in the morning.

That was when the teller told me that only two thousand dollars of it was authentic.

My mind was still in a fog when I took a cab home.

Before I even opened the door, I heard Peter’s mother, Deborah’s voice.

“If you ask me, we can’t put this off. We need to figure things out now.

“Crematorium prices change every single day. Wait one more day, and you’re paying a few hundred dollars more.”

I stood outside the door with my hands holding the doorknob.

“I asked around. That place across town is expensive. It’s over six thousand dollars. But the one near the highway is cheap. It’s about a thousand eight hundred dollars for the whole package. The only downside is no wake or service. You get the ashes in a box.”

“Three thousand eight hundred dollars is fine. That person’s dead already. What’s the point of a wake or service?”

“Mom, what are you two talking about?”

It was Peter’s younger sister, Priscilla.

“We’re talking about something serious here. Didn’t Riley’s dad get hospitalized for a liver problem? I heard it’s pretty bad. That kind of problem moves fast. One minute he’s here, the next he’ll be gone. We need to get ahead of this. Find a time to send him to the crematorium. Otherwise, keeping up with his treatments is just burning money.”

“Tell me about it,” his second aunt, Tracy, chimed in.

“Riley’s got bad luck, too, for getting stuck with a father like that. Think about it. She’s been married to Peter for a year now, but there’s no sign of a baby. She can’t even have one kid. And now her dad is sick. Isn’t that just bringing trouble to our family?”

I stood at the door, hearing these hurtful words.

My father was still alive. He was still being treated in the hospital. After surgery, there was a good chance he would fully recover.

But there they were, sitting together and discussing which funeral home offered a better deal for my father so casually.

“Oh, come on. Stop talking. Riley might hear you. That’s not good,” Priscilla said.

“So what if she hears me? Am I lying? Her dad has been diagnosed with liver cancer. Sure, it’s at the early stage, but it’s going to happen sooner or later. If he dies sooner, at least we won’t waste money.”

Deborah paused, then continued, “Besides, she’s been married into our family for a year now. Perhaps it’s because her dad just won’t die, so my future grandson finds him disgusting and refuses to show up.”

I could not hold back anymore. I kicked the front door wide open.

In the living room sat a circle of people: Deborah, Tracy, Priscilla, his youngest aunt Katie, and a few other relatives I did not recognize.

The coffee table had a bowl of potato chips and a bag of pretzels. The floor was covered in crumbs.

They went silent instantly when they saw me.