Late-stage cancer meant the treatment costs were staggering. Chemo, radiation, imported drugs, long-term recovery care.
At minimum, they needed to pull together over a million yuan.
And the five-year survival rate was abysmal.
Odds were the money would be gone, I'd be dead anyway, and my family would be buried under a mountain of debt.
To scrape together the medical funds, the whole family pooled what they had. The total came to 190,000.
Mrs. Acevedo Sr. contributed 20,000. I put in 50,000. Phineas, 120,000.
When I saw Phineas's balance, something heavy settled in my chest.
I made 8,000 a month and covered nearly every household expense. Saving 50,000 made sense.
Phineas made 13,000 a month, plus various bonuses. Over six years, that should have been well over a million.
Where had his money gone?
My phone buzzed. Another message from Lily's kids' smartwatch：
“Mom, Dad lied to you.”
“His salary isn't 13,000. It's 28,000.”
My hand froze. I whipped around to look at my daughter.
She was out on the balcony, back to me, playing with her blocks.
I walked over to her, and right in front of her, typed a reply to that number：
“Who are you really?”
“How do you know any of this?”
But the smartwatch on Lily's wrist showed no notification at all.
I was still staring at it, confused, when Gloria accidentally knocked over her water glass.
By the time I'd changed her into dry pants and come back out, a reply had come through on my phone：
“Mom, I'm Lily. Ten years from now.”
My whole body went rigid. My fingers shook as I typed back：
“You……how can you prove that?”
“I like to save my leftover allowance inside Teddy Bear Beibei's tummy.”
My eyes snapped to my daughter on the balcony.
She was sitting there right now, the stuffed bear hugged to her chest.
Pain tore through me so fast my vision blurred red.
Lily's habit of tucking coins into the ripped seam of that bear's little shirt was our secret. Ours alone. Nobody else in the world knew.
She……really was my daughter.
“After they beat me to death, my soul wouldn't move on. I found the smartwatch you gave me when I was little. It can reach you across ten years.”
“Mom, here's what happens next. Dad will suggest listing the house for sale.”
“But he'll price it 50,000 above market. No buyer will touch it.”
“Then Grandma will suddenly get sick and be rushed to the hospital. Dad will claim it wiped out every last cent of the family savings.”
“He'll trick Grandpa and Grandma Winfield into borrowing money everywhere. Massive debt.”
“To pay it back, Grandpa will work himself to death on a construction site. Grandma won't survive the shock. Heart attack.”
I was about to type another question when Phineas noticed my red eyes and pulled me close, his arm around mine：
“Babe, don't cry. If the money's not enough, it's fine. I'll list the house right now.”
I gripped my phone so hard my knuckles ached, and pressed my face into his chest.
“Phineas, is there anything you're keeping from me?”
His heartbeat stuttered.
I drew a long, slow breath.
If the person on the other end of those messages really was Lily, ten years from now.
Then Phineas would really beat my daughter to death.
My nails dug so deep into my palms they ached.
I didn't sleep that night.
I pretended not to notice when Phineas crept into the bathroom at 2 a.m. and spent nearly half an hour whispering into his phone.
First thing the next morning, after dropping Lily off at preschool,
I told him I was going grocery shopping. Instead, I took our documents to the bank and pulled Phineas's transaction records for the past six years.
The printout was thick enough to grip. My hands wouldn't stop shaking.
His salary had climbed from 13,000 to 26,000 a long time ago.
His year-end bonuses had gone from tens of thousands to 150,000 a year.
And starting five years ago, right when I gave birth to Lily,
every single month he'd been wiring between 20,000 and 30,000 to the same account.
