Chapter 1

The day my wife went into labor, I was out at a massage parlor with a friend.

It was a neighbor who heard the commotion and called the ambulance.

The baby was born, and my wife barely made it through alive.

By the time I got to the hospital, the woman in the next bed was glaring at me, and the nurses in the hallway had their heads together, whispering. They kept their voices low, but those three words, "not much of a man," still drifted over, clear as anything.

I didn't so much as blink. I slapped the bill down on the edge of her bed.

"Fifteen thousand three hundred total. Insurance covered two thousand, and we split the rest fifty-fifty. Your share is seven thousand six fifty."

Sonia Henson had just finished getting stitched up. Her face was a waxy yellow. She looked down at the baby swaddled in her arms, her lips trembling for a long moment before she got the words out. "I quit my job to prepare for the birth. I spent everything I had. There's really nothing left, not a cent."

"That's your problem. We agreed on this a long time ago. After you got pregnant, we each pay our own way."

I grabbed her phone and flipped to her installment app. Well, would you look at that. Thirty-two thousand in debt, all past due.

Then I checked her messages. She'd hit up every relative and friend who might lend her a dime. The latest transfer was half a month ago. Even her niece, still in high school, had sent over five hundred.

Her tears dropped onto the blanket. The veins on the back of her hand stood out as she gripped the corner of it. "Not here. I'm begging you. Can't we talk about this at home?"

The families around the other beds were all looking over now. Out in the hallway, a nurse pushed a supply cart past, and the sound of the wheels cut off dead.

I folded my arms and pitched my voice just loud enough to carry through the whole ward.

"Afraid of the embarrassment? You won't pay what you owe, and now the kid's got a deadbeat for a mother the day it's born. You're not worried about embarrassing your own child?"

1

Sonia's eyes went red, her voice shaking. "Eugene Finch, how can you say that about me?"

The woman in the next bed was peeling an apple for her daughter. She heard that.

The knife in her hand paused.

"Oh, come on now, young couple having a spat, aren't you? It'll blow over in a bit. Young men these days, every one of them steps up. A few thousand, how could you make a woman who just gave birth cough that up."

Before she'd finished, the baby let out a wail.

Every head in the ward turned toward us.

Sonia quickly bent to soothe it, holding the baby against her chest and patting gently.

She'd just been stitched up, and the smallest movement drained another shade of color from her face.

But she forced out a smile, tears still on her cheeks, her voice impossibly soft. "Don't cry, baby, Daddy's just being cranky, Daddy's only teasing Mommy."

She looked up at me, and there was something in her eyes like a plea, and like she was making excuses for me to everyone in the room.

"I'm not teasing."

I stood at the foot of the bed and folded the bill again.

My voice wasn't loud, but every word landed like a nail driven in.

"Sonia, I told you on our first day of marriage. My salary isn't much. Buying the apartment, the car, marrying you, it wiped out everything my family had. After you got pregnant, all expenses fifty-fifty. You nodded to that."

"If you won't own up to this today, I'm walking out right now. You can figure out the rest of the hospital fees yourself."

It wasn't that I felt nothing saying it.

It was just that whatever I felt got pressed down fast by something heavier.

I'd been chasing Sonia since college, all the way through into our working years. Seven years, start to finish.

Back then I brought home a little over ten thousand a month. I ate in the company cafeteria, rented a partitioned room, and pinched every penny for years to save up.

Then one sentence from her. A dowry of a hundred and eighty-eight thousand, plus the wedding apartment and the car, and not one item could be missing.

My parents emptied out their retirement savings.

I took out a loan on top of that, and just barely scraped it together.

On our wedding day I cried like a wreck.

I thought I'd finally brought her home. Thought it was all worth it.

But only I know how these last two years of marriage went.

The mortgage and the car loan sat on my back, and I wouldn't even spring for a decent pack of cigarettes.

I worked overtime until two in the morning, all for that little bit of overtime pay.

Now the debt was finally cleared. Splitting the pregnancy costs fifty-fifty, wasn't that what we'd agreed on from the start?

My debts, I pay. Her share, she pays.

That's only fair.

Sonia's arms froze around the baby.

She didn't say anything. Her tears fell one by one onto the swaddling cloth, landing beside that tiny face.

The baby, oddly enough, went quiet, its wrinkled little face burrowed against her.

The ward suddenly went silent.

The woman who'd been trying to smooth things over set the apple and the peeling knife down together on the nightstand.

Her lips worked, and in the end she couldn't hold it in. "What kind of man are you? Your wife can't work while she's pregnant, where's she supposed to get the money? That nightgown she's wearing is an old one, washed until it's fraying at the seams. You can't see that? You pick now to settle accounts with her. Are you even a man?"

The old man by the window took off his reading glasses too, folded up his newspaper, and set it on his knee.

"Young man, a man should have some grace. Did the girl treat you badly, is that it, and you're holding a grudge? Take it from someone who's been around. What's past is past. You have to cherish the one in front of you."

I cut him off flatly.

"No. She's always been good to me."

The cold hallway light came slanting in and fell across my face.

I heard my own voice, so calm it felt strange even to me.

"But a rule we agreed on is a rule."