The words silenced the room. He insisted he had proof: she wasn’t pregnant at all. My eyes fell to the strange dent in her belly where he had struck. Against her protests, I pressed the area and felt hard edges beneath the fabric. My heart stopped. It was memory foam strapped to her body.

Gasps erupted as relatives tugged at her dress, exposing Velcro straps and padding. My husband explained that she’d bought fake bellies online to mimic pregnancy stages, stolen ultrasound pictures from forums, and scammed the family out of thirty thousand dollars in “medical bills.” He said he’d followed her to what she claimed was an OB appointment, only to find her at a bar, later buying more prosthetics from a costume shop.

My sister shrieked at him to stop, but he pressed on. The real reason he confronted her now, he revealed, was because she had targeted a teenage girl at the hospital’s maternity ward. Security footage showed my sister trailing the girl, who had no family, attending support groups under the guise of being pregnant herself. She had researched the hospital’s schedules, bought scrubs and a car seat, and planned to steal the girl’s newborn the next morning when staff rotations overlapped.