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I Lost to My Husband’s Ex Twelve Times—Then Found Out His Coin Had No Heads
Novelix
Completed
"My husband used a coin toss to decide who controlled our money. Heads, I got my pay back. Tails, his ex-wife kept control of it. Over the past year, I'd lost twelve times in a row. I had to wait for Vivian to send me money to buy groceries and forward her the utility bills before I could pay them. Even buying a box of tampons meant explaining why I'd already used up the ones from last month. Why did his ex-wife get to decide how Nathan and I spent every dollar in our own home? But whenever I questioned him, he'd wrap his arms around me, patient as ever. ""Vivian always handled this stuff. If I take it all away from her right after the divorce, she'll think I can't wait to erase her from my life."" ""Just give her a little more time, okay? Win next month, and you get the account. Then she won't have a reason to be upset."" Then, on my birthday, he flipped the coin again at the restaurant table. Tails. Vivian smiled, picked up the bank card in front of me, and left with her arm linked through Nathan's. I sat there alone until a waiter came over. ""Ma'am, I think your husband dropped this."" He placed a coin in my palm. Both sides were tails. I hadn't been unlucky. Nathan had never given me a chance to win. He could keep his rigged coin and his ex-wife. I was done being his wife."
Chapters (3)
第1章
My husband used a coin toss to decide who controlled our money. Heads, I got my pay back. Tails, his ex-wife kept control of it.
Over the past year, I'd lost twelve times in a row. I had to wait for Vivian to send me money to buy groceries and forward her the utility bills before I could pay them. Even buying a box of tampons meant explaining why I'd already used up the ones from last month.
Why did his ex-wife get to decide how Nathan and I spent every dollar in our own home?
But whenever I questioned him, he'd wrap his arms around me, patient as ever.
"Vivian always handled this stuff. If I take it all away from her right after the divorce, she'll think I can't wait to erase her from my life."
"Just give her a little more time, okay? Win next month, and you get the account. Then she won't have a reason to be upset."
Then, on my birthday, he flipped the coin again at the restaurant table.
Tails.
Vivian smiled, picked up the bank card in front of me, and left with her arm linked through Nathan's.
I sat there alone until a waiter came over. "Ma'am, I think your husband dropped this."
He placed a coin in my palm. Both sides were tails.
I hadn't been unlucky. Nathan had never given me a chance to win.
He could keep his rigged coin and his ex-wife. I was done being his wife.
...
I closed my hand around the coin. As I stood up, the waiter reminded me that the bill hadn't been paid.
I'd been paid just the day before. At Nathan's insistence, I'd already transferred the money to the household account he'd told me to use. Vivian had the card, and all the payment alerts and login verification codes went to her phone.
There were only a few dollars left in my own account.
I called Nathan. I'd barely mentioned the restaurant bill when Vivian took over.
"Claire, I told you we've already had enough extra expenses this week. Why did you order dessert?"
I looked at the cake on the table, with a candle in it.
"It's my birthday."
"So? You think the budget doesn't count just because it's your birthday?" She laughed. "Stay there. I'll pay when I'm finished. Maybe next time you'll remember to ask first."
It was my paycheck.
And she was using my own money to lecture me about how to celebrate my birthday.
"Nathan," I said. "Did you hear what she just said?"
"She's just trying to stop you from wasting money." He already sounded impatient. "We're going to her parents' for dinner. Don't ruin everyone's evening."
Before we got married, he'd always booked this restaurant in advance for my birthday. He remembered I didn't eat oysters and didn't want almonds on my cake. Last year, he'd proposed right beside this table.
Now he was leaving me here to have dinner with his ex-wife and her parents.
"I want a divorce."
There was a moment of silence, followed by Vivian's laughter.
"Here we go again. Is threatening you with divorce the only thing she knows how to do?"
Nathan sighed.
"You just lost a coin toss, Claire. You can try again next month. There's no need to take it this far."
He hung up.
I looked at the coin in my palm, with tails on both sides, and finally understood: the next month he kept promising me was never going to come.
The restaurant manager didn't rush me out. He even brought me a glass of water. Vivian didn't call to pay until they were almost ready to close. By then, the food in front of me was cold, and the candle had burned out.
I left the untouched cake on the table and whispered, "Happy birthday, Claire."
When I got back to our apartment building, my key card didn't work.
I tried again. The reader still flashed red. Then a message appeared in our three-person group chat.
"Vivian forgot her visitor pass today, so I gave her the spare key card. She said you'd lost yours and asked the front desk to deactivate it. You can get a replacement tomorrow."
I looked at the card in my bag, the one I'd had with me the whole time, and sent Nathan a photo.
All he sent back was, "She got mixed up, that's all. Ask the front desk to let you in. Don't start another fight."
The person on the night shift didn't recognize me. I sat on a bench outside the lobby while he contacted the building manager to verify that I lived there. My phone's lock screen lit up. In the photo, Nathan was on one knee in front of me, holding a ring.
Then Vivian posted an update.
She had her arm linked through Nathan's as they stood between her parents, all four of them close together. The caption read: With my family.
I closed the photo and found the contact information for a lawyer a client had once recommended.
"I need to end my marriage. Please tell me what I need to do."
第2章
The next day, I was planning to visit Mom and ask if she'd be willing to move closer to where I worked.
For the past year, I'd worked in food prep for a catering company and picked up a few weekend shifts in event kitchens. I didn't earn much, but as long as I stopped handing over my pay, Mom and I would have enough to start over.
Nathan had promised to pay for any treatment her insurance didn't cover. All I had to do was deposit my pay into the household account and leave the rest to him.
I'd believed him. That was why I'd put up with Vivian's rules, over and over.
Instead, I went first to a shop on the corner that bought jewelry.
The woman behind the counter examined my wedding ring under a light.
"I can't offer you anything close to the original purchase price today. If you're willing to wait, we could sell it on consignment for you."
"I'll sell it now."
I signed my name and watched her put the ring in a box.
On our wedding day, Nathan had slipped it onto my finger and told me I'd never have to face everything alone again.
A year later, I had to sell it just to pay my own way to see Mom without asking Vivian's permission.
After leaving the jewelry store, I went to the market and bought chicken to roast, potatoes, green beans, and Mom's favorite apple pie.
Maggie, the vegetable vendor, knew me. When she saw me add a carton of mushrooms to my basket, she smiled. "No waiting for that woman to send you money today?"
I gave her a small smile and didn't answer.
Vivian gave me only twenty dollars a day to buy food for the apartment. If I needed an extra bottle of cleaner, I had to message her first. Once, Maggie had given me a small handful of herbs. When Vivian noticed they weren't on the receipt, she'd made me explain exactly what had happened in writing and send it to the group chat.
Nathan had read it and said at least she kept track of where the money went.
I went home, roasted the chicken and vegetables, packed them into containers, and cut two slices of apple pie. The last time Mom called, she'd said the pie in the dining hall was always too sweet.
I'd just picked up my coat when Nathan and Vivian walked in.
Vivian glanced at the counter, and her smile vanished.
"Where did all this come from?"
She pulled the lid off a container and turned the chicken over, sending sauce dripping down the side.
"What are you doing? That's for my mom."
"I asked where you got the money."
I reached for the container, but she tipped it straight into the trash. The chicken and potatoes landed on last night's coffee grounds, followed by the vegetables and, finally, the apple pie.
I grabbed her wrist. "Stop!"
Nathan immediately pulled me away.
"Claire, answer the question first. Have you been hiding money this whole time?"
Vivian had already picked up my bag and emptied it onto the couch. My wallet, keys, and tissues scattered across the floor. She took the cash left from selling my ring and slipped it into her purse.
"No wonder you keep saying twenty dollars isn't enough. You've been stashing it away."
"That's not your money. Give it back."
She stepped behind Nathan.
But Nathan bent down and picked up the jewelry store receipt. His expression changed when he read it.
"You sold your wedding ring?"
"Yes. I wanted to cook Mom something she likes and pay for the trip myself. Now you know."
He looked at my bare ring finger, as if he was finally realizing this wasn't like the other times.
"Claire, we can talk. You didn't have to do this."
Vivian took his arm.
"We certainly do need to talk. Today it's her ring. Tomorrow she'll be hauling everything out of the apartment. It's not like her mother has nothing to eat. Why waste money on this?"
Nathan's expression hardened again as he looked at me.
"Why do you always have to make everything so difficult? Why couldn't you just tell me what you needed?"
"I did."
I looked at the food in the trash. My hands were still shaking.
"I told you every single time."
He didn't answer. But as I headed for the door, he called after me.
"You don't have a cent on you. Where are you planning to go? Talk things through with Vivian first. You can't just slam the door and walk out every time there's a problem."
My phone buzzed just then.
It was a message from Lydia, the lawyer.
"Claire, I've checked the wedding details and documents you sent me. I couldn't find an official record of the marriage, and there are problems with the certificate you gave me."
Another message followed immediately.
"You may never have been legally married to him."
第3章
I went back to the bedroom and pulled the box of wedding keepsakes from the bottom of the closet.
Inside were the ribbon from my bouquet, cards from our guests, and the marriage certificate Nathan had given me.
It had been a small wedding, held at a rented house by a lake. He'd found the officiant and handled the paperwork. Afterward, he'd said everything was taken care of and told me to just enjoy our honeymoon.
I sent Lydia a photo of the document and asked whether she was sure.
She called me back soon afterward. The number on the certificate didn't match any valid record, and the information for the person who'd signed it didn't check out, either. She would keep looking into it, but I needed to protect my accounts and personal documents first.
When Nathan followed me in, I was setting the paper back on the bed.
"What are you looking for?"
"The record of our marriage."
His eyes fell on the document, and he stopped.
Looking at him, I realized I didn't need Lydia to investigate any further.
"Even this was fake?"
"Claire, hear me out."
He reached for me. I moved away.
"When Vivian and I first divorced, she was in a really bad place. She kept saying she couldn't go on. I promised I wouldn't legally remarry until she was ready to move on."
I stared at him, barely able to process what he'd said.
"So you staged a fake wedding for me?"
"The wedding wasn't fake. I love you, and I'm the one sharing a home with you. We just haven't finalized the paperwork yet."
"It's been a year, Nathan. How long were you going to wait? Were you just going to keep lying to me as long as she wasn't ready?"
His patience was wearing thin.
"Do you have to put it like that? Didn't you used to say you didn't even care about marriage? That you just wanted to live with someone who made you feel safe?"
I stood there with my ears ringing.
When I was little, my father would get drunk, smash things, and hit my mother. He gambled away their savings and used her paychecks to cover his debts. The day an ambulance took her away, I thought I'd never see her again.
She survived, but her health was never good afterward. I'd told Nathan I might never get married.
He'd spent two years convincing me he wasn't like my father.
Now he was using the fears I'd trusted him with to tell me I had no right to care that he'd lied.
"You know that's not what I meant." He lowered his voice. "Our life together isn't fake. Is a piece of paper really more important than all of that?"
I folded the document and put it in my bag.
"Give me back the money I earned. I'm going to see Mom."
Vivian stood in the doorway and immediately laughed.
"There it is. All that, and it still comes down to money. Her mother's perfectly fine where she is. Can't you see she's using this to pressure you?"
Nathan rubbed his forehead and took out his phone.
"You need money to get there? I'll give you the fare. Stop arguing about everything else."
His message soon appeared in the group chat. "Send Claire twenty-five. She's going to see her mom."
Vivian glanced at it, opened her wallet, and tossed a five-dollar bill onto the bed.
"She can take the bus."
I picked up the bill and left the apartment.
Mom lived in an assisted living community on the outskirts of the city. Her retirement income paid for her apartment and meals. Nathan had promised to cover her specialist follow-ups, medications her insurance wouldn't pay for, and transportation.
When I arrived, the woman at the front desk was trying to reach me.
"Claire, your mother hasn't been doing well lately. We need to go over the plans for her treatment with you."
She took me into the office and showed me several notices. Mom's specialist appointment had been canceled, and there had been problems getting her prescriptions refilled. The person listed as responsible for payment kept asking for more time.
That contact was Vivian.
"How long?" I asked.
"A few months. Your mother said the family knew, and she didn't want to give you more to worry about."
I didn't wait to hear the rest. I turned and ran to the end of the hall.
Mom's door was ajar. I pushed it open and found her collapsed beside the bed, one hand still reaching toward the phone on the table.
"Mom!"