Once mother and daughter had cried their fill, Zoe put on her overblown performance. "Honey, Mom and I went to a medium a few days ago to ask about where you and Dad had gone."
"The medium said the two of you would come back to us with brand-new faces. Mom and I didn't believe it at the time. I never thought it would actually come true!"
Darlene Dickerson stepped up in front of us. "I know this is hard for you both to accept, but the truth is that my husband and my son-in-law have been reborn in your husbands' bodies."
"Your husbands died in that car crash. The men living now are ours. Please, take comfort where you can."
Amelia walked over to stand in front of Otto. "Otto, I'll ask you one last time. Who exactly are you?"
He answered without a flicker of shame. "I'm Brett. I'm Darlene's husband, and I'm Zoe's father."
Amelia's tears finally broke free. She crossed to Joel.
"Son."
He took a step back, dodging her outstretched hand.
"Don't touch me. I'm not your son. I'm Victor. I have nothing to do with you."
The subtitles kept scrolling in front of my eyes.
"These two are truly heartless. All they care about is their own pleasure, and to hell with what happens to the wives they married."
"This way they get to be with their affairs free and clear, and never wear the blame for it. Poor Lindsay Parsons and Amelia Henson, their whole lives ruined by these men."
"Otto dropping his pants and playing stranger is one thing, but Joel was raised single-handedly by Amelia, and he can still treat his own mother like this. What a devoted son."
"Lindsay is risking her life to bear Joel a child, and these two foolish women are being led around in circles by these two scumbags. After mother and daughter-in-law are dead, this father and son will pretend to get their memories back and inherit the one house left in Amelia's name."
"…"
With every subtitle that flashed past, Amelia's face turned a shade colder.
By the end, every trace of warmth had drained out of her eyes, leaving nothing but resolve.
Zoe looked at Amelia and me like a woman who had already won.
"Could the two of you please leave? Our family is finally reunited, and we don't want outsiders in the way."
Amelia gripped my hand, as if she had settled something inside herself, and said only one thing.
"Lindsay, we're leaving."
Out of the hospital, my heart was still pounding.
"Mom, everything we saw. It's all real."
Amelia looked at me, her gaze sliding slowly down to my belly.
"Come on. We're going to see an OB."
The doctor examined me. Sure enough, I was pregnant.
Amelia didn't hesitate. "End it. This child can't be kept."
I froze.
"Mom, I thought you'd never be able to bear it."
"An ingrate's child is just another ingrate. What is there to bear? That father and son don't care whether the two of us live or die, so why should you throw your life into carrying on their name?"
"Get rid of the child. Today we leave the Mason line without a single heir."
I nodded hard. "All right."
That same afternoon, I went in for the procedure to end the pregnancy.
Coming out of the operating room, I saw the subtitles again.
"Lindsay may have gotten rid of the child, but soon the Mason men will come knocking to file for divorce. By then the two women will be left without a cent, and everything they've built up over half a lifetime will have been quietly carried off by the Mason men and handed to that mother and daughter."
"The Mason men still have several outstanding construction payments they never settled, and the debt collectors are about to come to the door. These two kindhearted women can't stand to see the workers go unpaid, so they'll borrow money everywhere to scrape the sum together."
"If it weren't for those construction debts, Lindsay wouldn't have to work herself to the bone, and Amelia wouldn't be washing dishes for strangers at sixty. What they don't know is that these debt collectors are all in on it with the Mason men, and the whole point is to squeeze the last bit of value out of the two of them."
