Chapter 2

2.

Preston froze, staring at me for several seconds.

"You want to end the marriage over one jar of nutritional supplements?"

I threw it back at him. "Aren't you always saying this marriage can't go on? Then stop forcing it."

Off to the side, Millicent's eyes went red.

"Mr. Barrett, don't fight with your wife because of me. She's far along, she can't get upset. I should just go!"

She braced her belly and started for the door, and Preston rushed to block her.

He gathered her in carefully.

"Where do you think you're going? Your rental doesn't even have air conditioning. It's the middle of summer, how is a pregnant woman supposed to survive that? No. Absolutely not."

When he turned back to me, his tone had already changed.

"Georgette, over one thing to eat, you're really going to drive Millicent to her death? Her man's out of town and can't come back. She's renting an old dump with no elevator, all alone, climbing six flights every day. She had bleeding not long ago."

"She has no man to lean on, no savings to fall back on. You throw her out now and it's the same as taking her life."

The baby kicked me hard, and the pain bent me over.

I looked at this man I'd been married to for five years, and my chest went tight, wave after wave.

It was the first time I'd learned how attentive he could be.

He knew Millicent lived in a rental and it was hard climbing six flights. He knew she'd had bleeding with no one to look after her. He knew she had no savings and her days were hard.

But he'd never cared how I got through my own pregnancy.

At seven months I was still working overtime to hit a project deadline, and he never asked me a single thing.

I threw up until my stomach bled and got hospitalized, and he came for ten minutes, then said the company needed him and left.

Every prenatal checkup I took a cab there and back on my own. Twice my blood sugar dropped so low I nearly passed out, and when I called him, he hung up and sent a text.

"In a meeting. Handle it yourself."

I'd told him I was tired, that I couldn't hold on, and every time he'd frown.

"What woman doesn't get pregnant? You're the only one making a drama of it."

His heart ached for Millicent climbing six flights alone. But when I was cramming onto the morning rush-hour train with my huge belly, did he ever frown even once?

It wasn't that he couldn't feel for another person. It was that the person he felt for had never been me.

I looked down at the mass of needle marks on the back of my hand.

Five months of injections to hold on to this baby, more than I could count.

I'd gritted through all of it, just to bring this child safely into the world.

My parents had emptied their retirement savings and called in favors to squeeze me into this room, so I could rest a little better through the last two months.

"This room came from my parents' savings and the favors they called in. This pregnancy, I got through on my own."

I lifted my head and looked at Preston.

"The rental Millicent lives in, she rented it herself. She didn't think it through. Why should it fall to me to take care of her?"

Before Preston could get a word out, Millicent suddenly cried out, her face draining white.

"It's all my fault. I'm useless and I still went and had a baby!"

Then she yanked the door open and ran.

Preston chased after her without a thought, his elbow jabbing into me. I stumbled a couple of steps and nearly fell.

I sat down on the bed and let myself settle, then picked up my phone and called my dad.

"Dad, help me find a divorce lawyer. And the hospital's emergency contact, change it to you."