My Mother in-law the Hockey Captain

Chapter 1

♡ SAGE’S POV ♡

The shivering cold woke me up before I even had the chance to open my eyes.

My tired eyes forced themselves open, only to clench back shut because of the gray, freezing light filtering through the thin curtains.

I squeezed my eyes shut tighter, pulling the thin blanket up to my nose. It didn’t help.

The power had been off for six days, which meant the house was basically a giant refrigerator.

I stayed perfectly still for a minute, just breathing, watching my breath puff out in a little white cloud before fading away.

I reached my hand out from under the covers, fumbling blindly for the lamp on the nightstand. My fingers found the switch. Click. Click. Nothing.

Right. There was no power.

I didn't know why I kept trying that stupid lamp. Old habit, I guess. Or maybe just pure, unfiltered denial. Both were pretty useless at this point.

I finally forced myself up. The blanket slid down to my waist, and the freezing air instantly attacked my bare arms. I swung my legs over the side of the bed, but my foot got tangled in the covers. I slipped right off the mattress and landed hard on my flat *ss. "Ouch," I muttered to the empty room, rubbing my tailbone. For a second, I just lay there on the freezing wooden floor, staring at the ceiling. I could fall asleep right here. Just close my eyes and never get up.

Ellis is gone.

I said it out loud sometimes. Just to hear the words. Just to see if they would finally hit me.

“Ellis is gone,” I whispered to the empty room.

The words just sat there in the cold air. They didn't make me sad anymore. They didn't make me angry. They just felt... heavy. Like a stone sitting right where my heart used to be.

He had been gone for weeks now. Five? Six? I honestly stopped counting. The days just bled into one another until they didn't mean anything. He left in the middle of the night, no note, no warning, no goodbye. Just an empty side of the bed and the quiet click of the front door closing behind him.

By the time I woke up the next morning, he had already wiped out every single account.

The joint checking. The savings. Even the three hundred dollars I had hidden in the coffee tin at the back of the pantry, shoved behind a box of stale crackers like I was a kid hiding candy. He found it anyway. He always found the things I tried to keep for myself. That was his specialty.

I stood up slowly, my legs feeling stiff and foreign, like they belonged to someone else. I grabbed Ellis’s old navy blue robe from the back of the door and pulled it on.

It was way too big for me, the cuffs frayed and worn, and it still smelled faintly of his cologne.

That sharp, clean scent I used to love when we first got married. The one that used to make my stomach flip.

Now it just made me want to throw up.

I wore it anyway because it was the only warm thing I had left.

I made my way to the kitchen, my bare feet slapping against the freezing wood. The house was a mess. Not the kind of mess that happens overnight, but the kind that happens slowly, day by day, when you just stop caring.

The sink was piled high with dishes I couldn't wash because the pipes were frozen. The counter was buried under a mountain of unopened mail. A fine layer of dust covered everything, like the house was already in mourning for me.

I opened the fridge out of pure habit, even though the light didn't turn on anymore. The shelves were empty. Completely bare. Except for one single jar of Dijon mustard sitting in the door.

Ellis’s favorite. He wouldn't eat any other kind. He used to make me drive to three different stores if the closest one didn't have it in stock.

I stared at that stupid jar for a long time. Half empty. Pale yellow.

“You’re the only thing he left me,” I said to the mustard.

The mustard didn't answer. Which was probably for the best, because if it had, I would have officially lost my mind.

I slammed the fridge shut and walked to the front door, dragging the heavy robe behind me like a funeral train. And that's when I saw it.

A bright orange piece of paper taped flat to the wood.

It wasn't slipped through the mail slot like the other notices. This one was taped on the outside. For everyone to see. The neighbors. The mailman. Anyone driving by who wanted a front-row seat to my absolute rock bottom.

I peeled it off. The tape cracked like thin ice under my fingers.

FINAL NOTICE. YOU MUST LEAVE THIS HOUSE IN 27 DAYS.

I read it twice. Then a third time, as if the words might magically rearrange themselves into something kinder. They didn't. Twenty-seven days until the police showed up and threw my stuff on the curb like garbage.

Twenty-seven days until they changed the locks and handed the keys back to the bank, pretending the last three years of my life never happened.

I should have felt something. Panic. Fear. That hot rush of adrenaline that makes you want to fight or run.

But I just felt nothing. Just that dull, heavy weight in my chest.

I set the notice on the hall table and walked to the living room window, pulling the curtain back just an inch to see who it was that just parked.

A white news van was just parked at the curb, its satellite dish pointed at the sky.

Channel 7. A woman in a red blazer stood on my dead, frost-covered lawn with a microphone, while a guy in a puffy jacket aimed a camera at my front door. More cars lined the street behind them. More than the people that came yesterday. They came and went in shifts now, like vultures taking turns at a carcass.

I leaned my head against the wall and watched them.

The woman in the red blazer started talking, her voice high and sharp, carrying through the thin glass.

"...the home of Ellis Harlowe, the missing financial consultant accused of by defrauding investors of over forty million dollars."

Forty f*ck*ng million.

The number still didn't feel real. I couldn't picture forty million dollars. I could barely picture forty. I had exactly sixty-three dollars left in my checking account. That was it. That was my entire life right now.

"...his wife, Sage Calloway-Harlowe, has not been seen leaving the residence in over two weeks..."

Her voice had a little lilt to it, like she was enjoying herself. Like my life falling apart was just good entertainment for her morning broadcast.

I slid down the wall until my butt hit the cold floor. I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them.

Two weeks. Had it really been that long since I stepped outside? I stopped going out after the third day. The reporters had swarmed me. Shouting questions. Shoving cameras in my face. One of them actually grabbed my arm, and I screamed and ran back inside like a scared rabbit.

After that, I just stayed in. It was easier and safer.

"...neighbors have expressed concern about the property's condition..."

Mrs. DeWitt.

It had to be her. She was the only person on this street who used words like "disrepair" in casual conversation.

She definitely called the news station. She probably called the police, too. I could just picture her standing at her window with a cup of tea, watching my life crumble with that tight little smile she always wore.

"This is a nice neighborhood, Sage. We try to keep things nice."

A laugh bubbled up in my throat. It came out sharp and broken, nothing like my real laugh. It sounded like someone else was in the room with me, slowly losing their mind.

I was twenty-four years old. I had a half-finished art degree, a missing husband, a house full of nothing, and sixty-three dollars. I hadn't spoken to another human being in four days. My parents were dead. My friends were long gone. My phone had been cut off three weeks ago because I couldn't pay the bill.

If I drew a picture of my life right now, it would just be an empty circle.

The reporter kept talking. "...questions remain about whether Mrs. Calloway-Harlowe had knowledge of her husband's activities..."

I flinched.

How on earth would they think that?

That I knew. They thought I helped him. Me. The quiet wife who stayed home and painted and pretended not to hear him on the phone late at night.

The wife who smiled at parties and wore the dress he picked out and never asked questions because questions made him angry.

And now I was the wife of a thief. The woman left behind. The one with her face on every news channel and an eviction notice sitting on her hall table.

I was so tired. Tired of being cold. Tired of being hungry. Tired of being watched.

I dropped my head back against the wall and stared at the ceiling. The cold from the floor seeped through the robe and into my bones, and I just let it.

Despair settled over me like a second blanket. Heavy, suffocating and cold.

Twenty-seven days. No money. No friends. No way out.

I was completely and utterly alone.

And no one was coming to save me.

Chapter 2

♡ SAGE’S POV ♡

I stayed on the floor for a long time. My back was pressed against the freezing wall, my knees pulled up to my chest, and my arms were wrapped so tight around them it felt like I was trying to hold myself together.

Because I was. If I let go, I was pretty sure I would just shatter into a million tiny pieces right there on the dusty hardwood.

Outside, it was getting worse. More cars. More vans. More voices. The drone was still buzzing overhead like a giant, angry mosquito, and I could hear the stomp of heavy boots on my front porch.

Someone knocked on the door, it wasn't a polite knock, but a rapid, annoying rap-rap-rap that made me flinch.

“Sage! Sage, come out! Just tell us where Ellis is!” a man’s voice bellowed through the wood.

I squeezed my eyes shut. Go away. Just go away.

“Is she even alive in there?” another voice muttered.

“Who knows. Maybe she’s hiding the money.”

The money. The for