The Lies That Kept Her Breathing

MotoNovel 1 Chapters English

The cold glow of my phone screen burned into my eyes. The number sat there inside my banking app, tiny and stark: $9.90. It felt like a needle driving straight into my skull. I didn't believe it. I couldn't. I swiped the app closed, reopened it, typed in the passcode, and scanned my thumbprint. Still $9.90. I did it again. A third time. A fourth. A fifth. The digits remained motionless, mocking me. I was sitting flat on the hardwood floor of the house we had just sold. Around me stood towers of taped cardboard boxes, the stale smell of dust and packing tape hanging thick in the air. Tomorrow morning, the keys would belong to a stranger. Three months. Ninety grueling days. I had spent every single waking hour running like a stray dog, swallowing my pride, begging anyone who would listen. I sold the sectional sofa we had picked out together, the pendant lights we had spent an entire weekend installing, the suburban home we had built over five years. I sold the truck I’d driven for six years—the one my dad had helped me buy after college. I took my parents’ emergency retirement nest egg, my in-laws’ modest life savings, and the down-payment fund my best friend had set aside for his upcoming wedding. Three hundred thousand dollars. Every cent of it had been sitting in that account yesterday afternoon. That money was Paige’s life. And now, there was nine dollars and ninety cents left. My fingers trembled as I dialed her number. When the call connected, the background was a wall of noise.

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