Seventy-Three Thousand Dollars in Phony Medical Bills, Paid for a Pregnant Replacement

Then his voice carried through the wall, the way voices do when someone thinks a fan is drowning them out.

“She signed it.

She signed all of it.” A pause.

“She thinks she’s going to fight me over a car.”

I laid the sweater in the case and smoothed it flat.

“The house is the house, Mom.

There’s nothing she can do about the house.”

He laughed at whatever she said.