The Door Handle Cover That Exposed My Husband's Other Home

Opening the package, I found myself staring at a pair of unfamiliar cartoon door-handle covers.

I checked every platform. No such order existed anywhere in my accounts.

I flipped over the delivery slip. The order had been placed by my husband.

The note read: For my darling wife. Now that you're expecting, you must never catch a chill.

My heart lifted, and I glanced at the test results on the coffee table.

I wondered to myself: I never told him. How could he know I was pregnant?

Just as I sat there happy, a phone call from the courier dropped me into ice water.

"I'm sorry, Miss Fox, the door-handle covers you just picked up were sent to you by mistake."

When I heard him read out that address with my own ears, a chill spread through me.

So my husband had gone and built himself another home behind my back.

1.

"Miss Fox, are you still there? This package was ordered by Mr. Walker. I don't know what went wrong with the system, but it got routed to your phone number."

I went over the delivery slip carefully.

The order was placed by my husband, Fred Walker. The address was my address. The phone number was mine.

"Mr. Walker has already contacted the delivery company. Would you mind bringing the package back to the pickup point when you have a moment?"

I paused, wanting to ask something, but I didn't know where to begin.

"Mr. Walker's wife recently had a baby. The package is some things for after the delivery, for her recovery."

"Miss Fox, these things aren't worth much and they're no use to you. Would you mind finding the time to drop them off?"

I looked at the door-handle covers and turned over what the courier had just said.

Besides me, Fred somehow had another wife.

I gathered my thoughts. "I've already opened it, so let me confirm with you. It's a pair of door-handle covers, right?"

He typed fast on the other end. "Yes, the thick, custom cartoon door-handle covers. Mr. Walker said they'd be embroidered with the initials of his and his wife's names."

I tore open the packaging and looked closely.

Sure enough, right there on the covers were the letters FW and MP.

My mind raced through the initials, but Fred's circle and mine barely overlapped.

I couldn't place this Mrs. Walker right away.

"What's the address he ordered it to? Could you give it to me?"

The courier hesitated for a moment. "Miss Fox, you only need to bring the package back. As for the rest, we'll re-route it ourselves."

I took a photo of the pair of covers.

"I'm missing a package of my own. There are important documents inside. I suspect the system misrouted it to Mr. Walker's delivery address."

The courier let out a short "Oh," and the keyboard clattered fast.

"Miss Fox, could you give me the tracking number? I'll look it up for you."

I answered quickly. "A friend sent it, so I don't have the number, but what's inside is very important."

"It's my personal ID documents. If they're lost, I'll have to call the police."

The courier drew in a breath and quickly made a call. "Look up the packages for the past few days at 11 Cloud Ridge Lane, Building 1, Unit 6008. Check carefully whether any of them is a standard-mail envelope with ID documents inside."

While he was on the phone, I quickly wrote down the address.

Stroke by stroke, I finished the line, and then I froze.

11 Cloud Ridge Lane, Building 1, Unit 6008.

How could it be here.

I pressed on in disbelief. "Did you find it? My ID card is in there. I need it this afternoon. Did the system misroute it?"

The courier apologized. "Miss Fox, all three branches near Mr. Walker's home checked, and none of them found the package. Mr. Walker may have already picked it up. Would you like us to contact him for you?"

I added, "Are you sure you checked thoroughly? Are there really only three branches nearby? Did you ask all of them?"

He assured me. "Every branch near 11 Cloud Ridge Lane reported back. There's no record of your package."

"All right, I understand." I made my voice sound disappointed.

"Miss Fox, let me register it for now. Please bring Mr. Walker's package over first. He's in a bit of a hurry on his end."

I looked at the three words of Fred Walker's name on the delivery slip and at 11 Cloud Ridge Lane, familiar and yet strange.

I said flatly, "I'll go right away. But are you sure Fred Walker lives at 11 Cloud Ridge Lane?"

He typed on the other end. "Over the past year and a half, Mr. Walker has placed 128 orders using this address. The order address has always been here."

After I hung up on the courier, I sat on the carpet and let out a cold laugh.

Well done, Fred. You really are something.

You actually dared to hide a woman away at 11 Cloud Ridge Lane.

And you hid her there for a year and a half.

I cleared the packaging off the floor, then went to the cabinet to dig out that sale contract.

A year and eight months ago, I had sold the house at 11 Cloud Ridge Lane with my own hands.

It was the dowry my parents gave me. My way out if I ever needed one.

But back then, Fred's mother was in the hospital, seriously ill, and money was needed fast.

To save her life, I sold that house cheap. Newly renovated, not lived in a single day, gone for four hundred thousand.

I still remember the moment all four hundred thousand landed in Fred's account.

He held me and sobbed, promising he would treat me right for the rest of his life.

That in the next life he would slave for me to repay what I'd done.

I never imagined that three months after the sale, he would move in there with his own Mrs. Walker.

I photographed the contract and studied the buyer's details.

I didn't understand this kind of thing, and it had never crossed my mind that Fred would lie to me.

Everything about the sale had been handled by him.

I never imagined a scam this big had been hiding inside it the whole time.

"Nina, look into this contract for me. Especially this buyer, Gwyneth Pruitt, and what she is to Fred."

Once my friend sent back an OK sticker,

I got up and locked the test slips away in the cabinet.

Then I picked up my ID and headed out.

The pair of door-handle covers I dropped off at the package pickup point.

To be sure it was Fred living at 11 Cloud Ridge Lane,

I used the excuse of a lost delivery to get the courier to pull the security footage from the depot Fred used most.

The moment I saw the husband I lived with day and night appear in that footage,

a sharp pain drove into my chest, and the last thread of hope I'd been holding onto disappeared.

I made it home in a daze and went straight to Fred's study.

I opened the computer and typed the password. Error.

Wrong? I tried again, a few more times.

We set that password together, he and I.

I never imagined he had quietly changed it.

I thought for a moment, then typed in a string of letters.

The computer opened.

He had actually used wasyw as his password.

He was in the habit of syncing his devices.

I opened every shopping app he used and saw order after order, packed tight down the screen.

Small things like door-handle covers, big things like a stroller, a car seat, a bedside crib.

In the past two weeks he'd placed twenty-three orders, all of it baby supplies.

Every address the same: 11 Cloud Ridge Lane.

I pulled the list down to refresh it. The earliest order was a refrigerator.

Ordered a year and seven months ago.

Back then his mother was ill, and I was at her bedside all day long, waiting on her.

He worked late every day and rarely came to the hospital.

So it turned out the late nights were only an excuse.

He'd been busy building a love nest for the other Mrs. Walker.

I saved screenshots of all of it as evidence,

then opened his messages and traced every mark left by the woman whose initials were syw.

Scrolling and scrolling, I found that this scam aimed at me

had, in fact, one other person who knew the truth.

The instant my mother-in-law's message popped up, I froze.

Fred, Molly just had the baby. You should spend more time with her.

Don't worry about Fern. I can help you keep it from her.

Staring at those two lines, my eyes blurred over.

This was the woman who kept saying she'd treat me like her own daughter.

And she'd known all along, and helped her son hide it from me for a year and a half.

I scrolled through every last message between the two of them.

By the end I was slumped in the chair, boneless.

So it had all started with that sudden, serious illness.

The whole thing was a trap, built to make me believe.

I backed up every chat log and sent it to my phone.

Then I wiped the tears from my eyes and, like a detective, went hunting.

One by one, I dug through Fred's other social accounts.

And finally, I found the trail of syw.

The livestream channel Fred kept liking was hers.

None of her videos showed all of him on camera.

But the wedding ring on his left ring finger, the scar below his throat, the tear mole at the corner of his eye.

Every one of them proved that the rich, attentive, gentle, devoted man in her videos was my husband.

I scrolled back to her earliest video, dated March 21st, a year and six months ago.

She was cutting a ribbon in front of my dowry wedding house, cradling red roses.

The caption was simple: Grateful for the love my husband and mother-in-law can actually show me.

At the end of the video, she and her husband and her mother-in-law were grilling around a fire pit in the little yard.

Even though she'd deliberately blurred the footage,

I still recognized the one bustling around the table, waiting on everyone.

It was the mother-in-law who at the time was supposedly bedridden, unable to care for herself, needing me to nurse her hand and foot.

She was even wearing the jade bracelet I'd given her, and a blue hospital band on her wrist.

After I'd watched all of the videos, oddly enough, my chest didn't ache anymore.

Instead a cold came over me, wave after wave.

That was when the phone rang.

It was Fred.

"Fern, Mom's had another attack. I can't come home tonight, I have to stay with her."

Right on cue, my mother-in-law's message popped up.

Fern, my chest hurts, I can't catch my breath. Fred's here with me. He's taking me to the hospital in a bit.

To make me believe it, she followed up with a video.

In it, she lay on the sofa, face pale.

Fred was carefully taking her blood pressure.

I stared at the exchange in his chat window with his mother, the one that had come up ten minutes ago.

Relax. As long as I say I'm sick, she'll never suspect a thing.

Come to the old house and pick me up first. If she checks up on you, just video-call her.

Once you've reported in to her, take me to Molly's. I miss my sweet grandbaby.

When I didn't answer, Fred got anxious.

"Honey, are you listening? Mom's getting worse and worse. I need to get her to the hospital fast."

Through the earpiece came my mother-in-law's heavy, labored breathing.

"Fern, sweetie, Mom can't catch her breath. I have to go to the hospital."

I steadied myself and said flatly, "Let Fred take you. Don't worry about me."

To keep me convinced, Fred kept soothing me over and over.

Twenty minutes later he even sent me a hospital registration slip.

I opened the map. City Women's and Children's Hospital.

Right near 11 Cloud Ridge Lane.

So once they'd cleared away my doubts,

the two of them couldn't wait to head out.

Just as I was fretting over when I should go see that other home of Fred's,

a purchase record handed me my chance.

"Miss Fox, your custom birthday cake has been picked up. Happy birthday! We'd be grateful if you could leave us a good review after you enjoy it. Your encouragement is our greatest motivation."

I opened the Annebeco ordering app on my phone.

The order history showed that fifteen minutes ago, someone had picked up a custom birthday cake at the store.

Only I knew the PIN on that prepaid card.

Only Fred knew it.

I called the store and confirmed that the person who placed the order and picked up the cake was Fred.

And that today was Miss Molly Pruitt's twenty-third birthday.

I couldn't stop laughing.

It seemed Fred was truly confident.

He thought the net he'd woven had me covered nicely.

I stood, opened my navigation app, and got ready to pay a visit to my husband's other home.

Before I set out, Nina called.

"Fern, I've got it. There's a problem with this transaction. This Gwyneth Pruitt does exist, but she's already dead. Do you know who she is?"

I said nothing, and Nina went on. "She's a distant cousin of Fred's."

"The money for this came out of Fred's pocket, and in the end it went right back into his account. He's playing you, Fern."

Her voice was full of fury.

"I looked into the accounts under Fred's name and yours. He's been transferring money to an account ending in 9864."

My chest tightened. "Since when?"

"The earliest transfer was two years ago. The account belongs to Molly Pruitt."

"Nina, can you pull the full transaction records? And Molly Pruitt's identity."

She spoke in a rush. "I already did. Over two years he transferred four hundred seventy-three thousand nine hundred twenty-six dollars total. This Molly Pruitt used to work as a receptionist at Fred's company, but she quit two years ago."

"Do you know, Fern, where she's living now?"

"11 Cloud Ridge Lane, right?"

Nina was stunned. "Fern, how do you know that?"

I said flatly, "Fred cheated on me. He conned me out of that house just to give this woman a home."

Nina was furious, cursing Fred over and over, calling him no kind of man.

"Nina, I need your help getting a divorce. I've sent you all the evidence I have. Take a look for me."

She said indignantly, "No problem. I'll make sure that piece-of-trash cheater walks away with nothing."

I said coldly, "That's nowhere near enough. I want him to walk away with nothing and end up ruined."

"But before that, I have something more important to do. Tonight I have a birthday party to attend."

Nina thought the rage had scrambled my brain.

"Fern, at a time like this? That trash has bled you dry, and you're still in the mood to go to a birthday party?"

I was putting on lipstick in front of the mirror.

"Of course. It's Molly Pruitt's birthday party, and my husband and my mother-in-law are both there. How could I miss it?"

She was quiet for a moment. "Wow. So your mother-in-law knew all along. That old witch. You wiped her backside when she was sick, damn it. Let her wait. I won't let her off either."

I hung up and picked up my bag.

Before I walked out, I glanced at the huge wedding portrait hanging in the living room.

Fred down on one knee before me, promising to take care of me for the rest of my life.

In the family photo in the lower left corner, he and I stood on either side of his mother.

His mother was grinning ear to ear, saying again and again that she'd treat me like her own daughter.

I never imagined that in less than three years of marriage,

the husband who promised me forever and the mother-in-law who promised to treat me like her own flesh and blood

had both been busy deceiving me.

Ding. My phone buzzed.

It was a notification from Molly Pruitt's account.

She'd started a livestream to mark her birthday.

The cover image was the custom cake Fred had bought her with my card.

Watching her show off her romance for the camera,

with his mother bustling around in the background and Fred cooing at the child the whole time,

I curled the corner of my mouth into a smile.

Since the stage was set,

it was time for me to make my entrance.