Despised After 24 Years as Free Maid, Cheating Family Regretted

After the silver-anniversary dinner, my husband's first love, Sabrina Lowell, posted a photo of two cruise tickets in their old college group chat.

She wrote, Owen Sanchez deserves to live for himself for once, instead of spending his whole life selling breakfast beside Monica Prescott, suffering for nothing.

She bragged, too, that her own restaurant company was worth tens of millions, more than enough to keep Owen comfortable in his old age.

Owen sent an angry sticker and replied, "Sabrina, don't joke like that. Monica will be hurt."

I actually thought he'd at least keep up appearances, that he still cared about the twenty-five years we'd spent as husband and wife.

But that same night, Owen handed me a divorce agreement.

The house and the pension went to him, and I was still to look after his mother and run the breakfast shop.

On holidays, I'd have to go back to his hometown with him as his wife, so the relatives wouldn't talk.

When I didn't pick up the pen right away, his face darkened and he threatened, "Monica, you're fifty-three. Divorce me, and who else would ever want you? Don't make me leave you with nothing."

My son and daughter chimed in too. "Sabrina's got money and class, Mom. Dad can finally have a good life with her. Stop dragging him down."

I didn't cry and I didn't make a scene. I only added one clause to the end of the agreement, a property-settlement clause.

Owen glanced at it, and his fingers suddenly shook.

The restaurant company Sabrina claimed was worth tens of millions was just one subsidiary my own restaurant brand had recently acquired.

......

"Monica, has being poor driven you insane?"

Owen stared at the property-settlement clause I'd added, his face going black.

The next second, he ripped the agreement to shreds and hurled them in my face.

"You knead dough for a living. Who are you playing at, some big boss? Sabrina's company is worth tens of millions. You couldn't even afford the doormat outside her door, and you want to settle her assets?"

Terry Sanchez drummed his fingers on the table, pushing me along.

"Mom, just sign already. Sabrina's promised to buy me a wedding home outright. You've sold coffee your whole life. Could you ever scrape together a down payment?"

Joan Sanchez hooked up my apron and flung it aside in disgust.

"If you were really somebody, would you be wearing a thirty-dollar rag of an apron? Stop holding Dad back from a good life."

I looked at the two children I'd raised for twenty-four years.

The money for Terry to study abroad, I'd saved it kneading dough at three every morning.

For Joan's heart surgery, I'd sold the gold jewelry my mother left me.

And now all they saw was that I was shabby, that I smelled of kitchen grease.

The doorbell rang.

Sabrina came in with movers and pointed at the master bedroom.

"The old bed's already gone. Put the new mattress here. Owen's back is bad, he can't keep making do."

She saw me and immediately hooked her arm through Owen's.

"Monica hasn't left yet? Maybe the workers should wait a bit, so she doesn't feel awkward."

Owen closed his hand over hers and turned a hard face on me.

"Look at Sabrina, then look at you. You reek of chopped scallions. Just smelling it makes me sick. Fine, don't sign the agreement, but move out tonight."

His mother came out of her room and kicked a dirty mop over to my feet.

"Mop the floor before you go. Divorce or not, the work still needs finishing."

I kicked the mop right back.

"Whoever dirtied it can get down on their knees and clean it.

"I've mopped this Sanchez family's floors for twenty-five years. From today on, it can rot and crawl with maggots for all I care. Don't count on me touching it again."

The room went silent all at once.

I picked up the scraps of the agreement off the floor and tucked them into my pocket.

"Take the house. I don't want it. The housework, the elder care, the breakfast shop, saving your face on holidays, all of it, off the table."

"Owen, you want to run off into the sunset with your first love? Fine. But first we settle twenty-five years of accounts, item by item."

Owen blocked my way.

"My mother took care of you all these years. You can't just wash your hands of her. Have a conscience."

I brushed his hand aside.

"She ate the food I cooked, wore the clothes I bought, and I sat by her bed when she was in the hospital. What did she ever do to take care of me?

"My conscience, you people picked it clean long ago. From now on, anyone who tries to guilt-trip me with it can cough up everything they owe me."

I pulled the door open. Behind me, Owen shouted, "Open the shop at five sharp tomorrow morning! Joan wants warm pastries!"

I walked straight into the elevator.

"If she wants them, let her real mother make them."

"The breakfast sandwiches I make, she's not worthy of eating."

Out of the complex, I got into the black Rolls-Royce parked in the shadow of the trees.

The general manager, Alex James, handed me a folder.

"Chairwoman Prescott, the paperwork's done.

"The company shares your father left you have all been registered in your name."

The next day was my fifty-third birthday.

In twenty-five years, no one in the Sanchez family had ever bothered to celebrate it. So when Terry called out of nowhere, it was the first time in living memory.

"Mom, don't open the shop today. Come to The Grand Hyatt Ballroom, I've booked a private room. Let's have a nice family dinner."

At that moment, Alex was giving me his report on the Harvest Dining audit.

"Chairwoman Prescott, Harvest has run at a loss for three straight months. There's a two-point-three-million shortfall on the books. Yesterday Sabrina Lowell applied to the group for another five million in operating funds."

I looked at the old photo album, at the four of us together, and finally closed it.

Call it one last look at them.

When I pushed open the door of the private room, Owen and the two kids were toasting Sabrina.

A brand-new designer bag sat beside her. There was no cake on the table, and no place set for me.

Terry saw me come in and didn't even stand up. He just put out his hand.

"Mom, you've still got half a million in that savings account, right? Give me the PIN."

"Sabrina's company is expanding, and she said I could buy in alongside her."

That half a million was what I'd scraped together selling breakfast sandwiches, day after day. It was the money I'd set aside for my own medical care.

I pressed my hand down on my bag.

"So you didn't call me here for my birthday. You called me here for my money."

Terry frowned.

"We're family. Why put it like that? Whatever I earn is still yours in the end, isn't it?"

"You're twenty-seven years old."

I stared at him.

"Have you ever bought me a single pair of socks? Ever paid one cent of my medical bills?"

I looked at the bag beside Sabrina, the one worth well over a hundred thousand.

"You'd take my money to shower on someone else, then promise me an easy retirement with nothing but your mouth. Terry, I can practically feel you counting the coins right in my face."

Owen slammed the table and shouted.

"The doctor scares you a little and you actually want to go under the knife? Sabrina's willing to bring Terry in and help him make money. Do you know what kind of chance that is? What kind of mother is this selfish?"

"It's not you in pain. It's not you on the operating table. Of course you can be generous with it."

"Owen, you're trading my life-saving money for your son's future. Did you ever once ask whether I was willing?"

Joan suddenly yanked my bag off me and dug out the bank card.

"Mom, do you even understand what an investment is? Is the PIN Terry's birthday? We'll move the money first, and pay you back once we've made a profit."

I reached to grab it back, but Owen seized my shoulder and shoved me backward.

My waist struck the corner of the table hard enough to break me out in a cold sweat.

He froze for a second and instinctively started to reach for me, his hand halfway out. He even pulled out the painkillers I take all the time.

Sabrina gave a small cough.

"Owen, my chest feels a little tight."

Owen pulled his hand right back and turned to pour her water, not even picking the pills up off the floor.

Sabrina took a sip and sighed at me.

"Monica's done manual labor her whole life. It's only natural she'd cling to a little money like this. Once the company gets back on its feet, I'll keep a support-staff job open for her. I'd never let her go hungry."

I braced myself against the edge of the table and straightened up.

"You take my life-saving money to plug your hole, then reward me with a support-staff job."

"Sabrina, you really do have some nerve."

The smile on her face stiffened.

"I'm only trying to be kind."

"How much your kindness is worth, the audit is going to spell out very soon."

By then Joan had already linked the card to her phone and held the facial-recognition screen up in front of me.

"Mom, just look at it. Don't make me fall out with you in front of everyone."

I snatched the phone out of her hand and called the bank right there to report the card lost.

"You want to fall out? Fine. I'll give you what you want."

"From this moment on, anyone who touches my money again, I go straight to the police."

Owen held Sabrina against him, his face gone livid.

"You reported it lost? You are paying for this dinner today, no arguments!"

I called the waiter over and paid only for my own cup of tea.

Then I took out my other phone and sent instructions to the group's finance department.

Suspend all new disbursements to Harvest Dining.

Cancel Sabrina Lowell's signing authority at The Grand Hyatt Ballroom.

I turned and walked out.

I had barely reached the lobby when I heard the shouting start up behind me.

Owen tried to settle the bill with Sabrina's company card, and it was declined again and again.

The manager came over with security and stopped them.

"Ms. Lowell, the outstanding tab your company signed for is due as well."

"If it isn't taken care of today, we'll have no choice but to call the police."

That night, all Sabrina could do was leave the keys to the company's Porsche as collateral.

Someone snapped a photo and dropped it into the college alumni group chat.

Sabrina claimed the bank had put a temporary limit on her card, and Owen backed up the lie. He even posted a long message accusing me of throwing a fit at my own birthday dinner on purpose, humiliating them.

I didn't respond. I went straight back to the Sanchez house for my documents and the old pocket watch my father had left me.

I pushed open the master bedroom door and found the mattress already swapped out for the one Sabrina had sent over.

My clothes had been shoved into a few black garbage bags, piled in the corner of the balcony.

Our wedding photo lay on top, the glass in the frame cracked, the crack running right across my face in the picture.

I turned and went to the study for the watch.

When I slid the bookcase aside, I noticed a floorboard had lifted.

I pried the board up. Underneath was hidden a rusted tin box.

On top sat a stack of remittance receipts.

The recipient's name was Gay Swanson. Five thousand a month, wired for five years straight.

Back then I'd asked for no bride price. To marry Owen, who had nothing to his name, I cut ties with my own father.

It wasn't until a year into the marriage that he knelt down and told me he'd been married before, and that he had three-year-old boy-and-girl twins.

He said his ex-wife had died of illness, that there was no one to look after the children, and he begged me not to send them away.

My heart ached for two motherless children. I bathed them, walked them to school, sat up through the night at their bedsides.

Twenty-four years, and I never once used the word "stepmother" to wound them.

But the release papers in that box spelled it out plainly.

Gay Swanson had been sentenced to twenty years for fraud and child trafficking, and had been out for five years now.

She hadn't died at all.

At the bottom of the box was a group photo taken last year.

Owen, the two children, and Gay gathered around a birthday cake. On the back was written:

"The four of us, a family at last, together again."

My hands were shaking hard.

I kept digging and found a hospital courier envelope that had been opened and glued shut again.

The sender line held only a hospital name and the name of an ordinary inpatient. The delivery date was two days before my father died, and the person who signed for it was Joan.

The envelope was already empty.

Back then the Sanchez family didn't know my father was the founder of Prescott Group. They only thought he was an ordinary old man I'd been estranged from for years.

But even with nothing to his name, he was still my father.

What gave them the right to decide for me that I shouldn't see him one last time?

Beneath the envelope was pressed an appointment slip from Serenity Rehabilitation Center, a family-initiated committal assessment.

The patient was me. The emergency contact was Owen. The appointment was for tomorrow morning.

The front door was suddenly shoved open.

Owen charged in with the two children.

Terry grabbed a fistful of my collar.

"Call the bank right now and cancel the freeze! Transfer the five hundred thousand into Aunt Sabrina's company account. Not a cent short!"

I threw his hand off.

"Touch me one more time and I'll have the police teach you how to respect your elders."

In the scuffle, the group photo and the release papers dropped to the floor.

Owen went white and lunged to snatch them.

"Who told you to go through my things?"

I stepped on the photo, bent down, picked it up, and slid it into my coat.

"What, the dead suddenly come back to life and you're afraid I can't handle it?"

"Or is it that the four of you had your little reunion behind my back, and you were afraid your free nanny would get in the way?"

Owen panicked.

"Monica, let me explain. Gay did time. I didn't want the children to know they had a criminal for a mother. After she got out, I only gave her a little to live on."

I slammed the remittance receipts against his chest.

"You used our marital assets to keep your ex-wife, reunited with her behind my back, and then had the children drain the money I was saving to save my own life."

"Owen, it wasn't that you were afraid of hurting the children. You just decided I was easy to fool."

Joan raised her phone and started sobbing at me:

"Mom, you've been so paranoid lately. We only wanted to take you in for a checkup."

I snatched the phone away, deleted the secretly filmed video, and held the appointment slip up in front of Owen.

"You've even booked the committal assessment."

"You're not worried I'll lose my mind. You're hoping I do. Once I'm declared legally incompetent, my money and my shop are yours to control, aren't they?"

Owen looked away and didn't deny it.

I took the documents and the pocket watch, turned, and walked out.

Downstairs, a van marked with the Serenity Rehabilitation Center logo sat parked in the shadows. Someone inside was aiming a camera up at the Sanchez windows.

I photographed the plate and the appointment slip and sent the location to Alex.

"Contact legal and the police. Look into this rehabilitation center."

"Tomorrow morning, they may make their move on me at the breakfast shop."

Alex replied quickly:

"Chairwoman Prescott, this facility was reported two years ago for illegally detaining people against their will."

"Just go tomorrow. Leave the rest to us."