Part 3Seven Years as His Secret

After I was practically shoved out of the hospital wing, I sat on a concrete bench by the bus stop for nearly two hours, numb to the biting wind.

Then my phone vibrated with an automated alert from a local social media feed.

The alumni dinner had been posted online.

The video had been clipped into a neat thirty-second viral reel. The caption in bold font: Side chick gets publicly demoted by billionaire heir at college reunion. Entire room loses it.

The frame where I gripped Garrett’s sleeve and whispered "Your girlfriend" had been paused, zoomed in on my mortified expression, and converted into a meme template.

Mistress of the Year.

The comment section was an endless sewer:

—Look at her face. Did she really think she was the wife?

—Seven years of being a side piece and she never noticed a ring? She’s either clinically blind or completely shameless.

—Imagine running a one-woman play for seven years just to get dropped in front of everyone. Pathotic.

For the next forty-eight hours, the world became a blur of cheap hotel walls and instant noodles. I couldn't bring myself to step past the lobby doors.

On the third morning, my phone rang from an unlisted local number. It was the superintendent of Greenmount Memorial Cemetery.

"Ms. Mercer? I’m so sorry to disturb you, but your mother’s headstone was vandalized sometime after midnight. We’ve already contacted the precinct, but we think you ought to come down here yourself."

When my Uber pulled up to the shaded hillside of the cemetery, the morning mist was still clinging to the grass.

Two words were spray-painted across my mother’s polished gray marker in thick, violent red lacquer: HOMEWRECKER.

Beneath it, in crude dripped lettering: Like mother, like daughter.

The groundskeeper stood beside me, shifting his boots in the damp earth. "The security cameras on the north gate have been down for maintenance since Tuesday, ma'am. We don't have footage."

I dropped to my knees in the wet grass. I didn't cry. I tore off my knit gloves and began clawing at the stone with my bare fingernails. But the red enamel had already settled deep into the porous grains of the granite, impossible to lift.

My phone buzzed in my coat pocket. Garrett.

"Nora," he said, the background noise suggesting he was in his downtown corner office. "I’ve already retained a digital PR firm to scrub the reunion clips from the major platforms."

I stared at the smeared red paint on my fingers. "My mother’s grave was defaced with spray paint last night. Did your PR firm handle that, too?"

A beat of hesitation. "I had nothing to do with that. It was probably some internet degenerate who tracked down your family name after seeing the viral video—"

"If you had stopped Vivian from projecting my private texts in that room, would anyone have ever seen that video?"

He didn't answer. He never answered questions that forced him to look in a mirror.

"Come stay somewhere safe," he said instead, his voice softening into that patronizing, managerial tone. "I’ve had my assistant set up a furnished townhome for you. It's quiet, secure, and not far from the old property."

My hands stopped scratching at the stone. "The old property? You mean my mother’s cottage?"

"Right," he said smoothly. "Vivian took a liking to the layout. Her holistic wellness consultant looked at the grounds and said the southern exposure and mature garden were ideal for prenatal recovery. She moved her nursery setup there last Friday."

A high-pitched ringing pierced my ears.

That modest craftsman bungalow on the edge of town was the only tangible thing my mother had left behind. She had worked two jobs for nearly a decade before she ever met my father to save for that down payment. She had planted the white gardenias along the stone walkway herself; she had hung the brass wind chimes from the cedar porch rafters.

Garrett knew that. Every April, he used to drive up there with me, helping me air out the rooms and oil the hardwood floors. He had held me on that porch swing and promised that the house would stay mine forever, that no one would ever touch it.

"You moved Vivian into my mother’s home?"

"Nora, the place was sitting empty eleven months out of the year," he sighed, sounding genuinely aggrieved by my reaction. "I’ll buy you a much nicer brownstone in Back Bay later this year. This is temporary."

"It belonged to my mother."

"You really need to work on your emotional maturity," his voice turned cold, the threat creeping back into his cadence. "Vivian is carrying an heir to the Bradford estate. I will not have her living in an environment that causes her distress. Now, are you going to take the townhouse I offered, or not?"

"If not, keep submitting the hotel invoices to my office. But you need to do something for me in return."

"Vivian’s baby shower is next Thursday at the country club. I need you to attend. Stand in front of our circle, shake her hand, and make a brief statement. Tell them you’ve always known about our legal marriage, that the two of us were simply close childhood friends, and that the whole thing was an inside joke taken out of context."

The bile rose hot in my throat. I let out a dry, raspy laugh. "Would you like me to tell them I threw myself at you for seven years, too? Would that make your story cleaner?"

"Nora," his voice dropped, sharp as an executive reprimand. "I am trying to save your reputation here. If you refuse to cooperate, I will pull the PR firm, and the internet can have whatever is left of you."

"Think very carefully about your next move. You still have your grandmother to consider."

The line went dead.

Before I could pull the phone away from my ear, a notification dinged. A photo from Vivian.

She was lounging on the wicker rocking chair on my mother's porch, her bare feet propped up, the white gardenias blooming behind her shoulder.

A second photo followed. A close-up of her neck.

Resting against her collarbone was a deep green carved jade pendant—an amulet I had spent three months traveling back and forth to an upstate monastery to have blessed for my mother during her chemotherapy. After she died, I had locked it in the small cedar chest in the master bedroom closet.

Vivian’s caption:

Sister, this antique jade carries the loveliest energy. The baby has been kicking so gently ever since I put it on. Thank you for the cottage—the energy here truly is divine.