The Truth Behind Three Hundred Dollars in Living ExpensesChapter 3

The next day was the weekend. Dominic slept until the sun was high before he got up. The living room was still a wreck—the table he'd knocked over the night before was where he'd left it, the broken glass still on the floor where no one had swept it.

Furious, he was about to storm into the bedroom and drag Joan out of bed when he found the door open, the blanket folded neatly, and no one there.

"Ran off, did she?" Dominic sneered, and went to the kitchen to find something to eat.

The fridge was empty except for half a bottle of expired hot sauce and a few bundles of dry noodles.

What he didn't know was that Joan was sitting in the infusion hall of a hospital right then.

Her face was pale. An IV drip was hooked into her left hand, and with her right she held her phone, laboring through a reply to a client. The screen was packed with revision notes—for a graphic design draft she'd pulled three all-nighters in a row to finish.

Ever since she'd married Dominic, her mother-in-law, Bernice, had taken hold of the family's finances. Dominic's paycheck went into Bernice's hands, and every month Joan received only a few hundred dollars in "grocery money." She'd protested about it at first, but every time Dominic would say, "My mom's doing this for our own good. Look how loose you are with money—when we have a kid, you don't think that's going to cost something?"

To keep the household running, and to buy medicine for her mother, who had a neck condition, Joan had gone back to her old trade. She didn't dare let Dominic know, because there was nothing he hated more than her "showing herself in public"—the way he saw it, it made him lose face. So she could only work while he was at the office or asleep, hunched over that old laptop in the study, drawing.

The long stretch of late nights and poor nutrition had left her with severe low blood pressure and chronic gastritis.

"Ms. Swanson, there's one more bag after this one. No family with you? This medication's a little hard on the stomach—better to have someone keeping an eye on you." A nurse came over to change the bag, looking at Joan sitting there alone.

Joan shook her head and forced out a thin smile. "It's fine. I can manage on my own."

As she said it, her phone buzzed. It was a message from Dominic. Not concern—a picture. The messy living room at home.

A voice message came right after. "Joan, where the hell did you die off to? The house is a disaster and you don't clean it up? My mom's bringing Molly over for dinner soon. Get back here and buy groceries and cook, now! Don't embarrass me!"

When it finished, Joan's finger hovered over the screen. After a long moment, she pulled out the needle before the bag had finished, pressed down on the bleeding puncture, and typed back two words: "On my way."