The day I hit six months pregnant, my father was diagnosed with kidney failure.

The doctor said if we wanted to save his life, we needed to come up with $300,000 first.

I clutched the payment slip, hesitating for a long while before I finally dialed Otto Gilbert's number.

"Otto, could you lend me $300,000 for now?"

"My dad's sick. The doctor says it's dangerous to keep putting it off."

There was impatience in Otto's voice.

"Deidre Fox, that family of yours is a bottomless pit."

"Marrying you was already the luckiest thing that ever happened to all of you."

"Don't think that just because you're carrying a baby, you can ask for whatever you want."

I gripped the payment slip tighter, my voice trembling.

"I'll pay you back someday…"

Otto let out a cold laugh.

"You're a housewife sitting at home growing a baby. What exactly are you going to pay me back with?"

"You wanted to marry up and skim my money to prop up your parents' house. Life doesn't work out that nicely."

Then a girl's sugary voice came through from his end of the line.

"Otto, thank you for the collar you bought Lucky. Four hundred grand? That's way too extravagant!"

Otto's tone went soft in an instant. "As long as you like it."

I stood frozen where I was, a bitter ache spreading through my chest.

At the door of the hospital room, my mother grabbed my arm, her eyes red. "Deidre, let it go. Otto works hard for his money too."

My father's voice was hoarse.

"I won't get treatment. Don't bow your head in that family for my sake."

I looked at the gray creeping into their hair, and all at once I felt how horribly wrong I'd been.

They hadn't raised me so I could stand there with a swollen belly, begging.

And certainly not so they'd be humiliated right along with me.

I took the payment slip back and steadied them both.

"Dad, Mom, this illness, we're treating it."

"From now on, we don't beg anyone for anything."

——

When I pushed open the study door with the divorce agreement I'd drawn up, Otto was sitting at the computer with headphones on.

What was on the screen wasn't a work document.

It was a horror movie.

In the little window in the bottom corner, a girl was curled up on a couch hugging a throw pillow, her eyes rimmed red.

The moment I pushed the door open, a scream came from his end of the call.

"Otto!"

He yanked off the headphones at once, and the tenderness on his face vanished completely the instant he saw me.

He frowned, his voice turning cold.

"Deidre, are you never going to let this go?"

"You chased me all the way to the study and interrupted my work over $300,000?"

I stood in the doorway, my fingers curling tighter and tighter.

So this was his work.

He'd said the company was busy, projects piling up, that he didn't want to disturb my rest, which was why he slept in the study so often.

I'd believed him.

I was so afraid of wearing him out that I didn't dare wake him even when my legs cramped in the night.

Afraid of annoying him, I'd brace myself against the wall and make it to the bathroom alone, even when morning sickness left my stomach burning with acid.

But it turned out, all those nights I thought he was up late handling work,

he was watching movies with another woman, soothing her fears, listening to her coo.

Something seemed to lodge in my throat, and it was a long moment before I held out the document in my hand.

"Take a look."

Otto didn't even lift his head.

"Just give the reimbursement slip to Vivien Chavez."

"She'll transfer this month's household allowance to you."

Watching him take it all for granted, I suddenly found it absurd.

I slammed the divorce agreement down on the desk with all my strength and said:

"This is a divorce agreement."

"Otto, we're getting divorced."

"I paid the down payment on this home. I want my share of that money back."

For a moment, Otto's face went blank.

But he quickly lowered his head and said:

"Got it. You can go now."

I bit my lip, still wanting to say something, but he clicked his tongue, impatient.

"If you've got anything else, say it all now."

I shook my head in silence and turned to go.

The instant the door closed, I heard a girl's bright voice come through his phone.

"Your wife's asking for a divorce! Aren't you going to go smooth things over?"

Otto answered flatly.

"I wouldn't lend her the money, so she's sulking. That's all."

"She won't actually divorce me."

I stood outside the door, and a cold settled over my chest.

From the day I got pregnant, Otto had made me quit my job.

It was only because his sperm count was low that we'd managed to have this baby at all, and nothing could be allowed to go wrong.

He said he earned money to provide for me and the baby, so I could rest and carry the pregnancy with peace of mind.

I quit my job, going from the youngest partner at a law firm, a graduate of a top school,

to Mrs. Gilbert, who waited in the mansion every day for her husband to come home.

But I soon learned that "never short on money" never once meant I was allowed to spend it.

When I bought prenatal vitamins, I had to send the link to Vivien.

When I added a single nightgown, I had to ask Vivien first whether it was appropriate.

When I went to the hospital for checkups, I had to keep even the cab receipts and wait for them all to be reimbursed at the end of the month.

Once, I only wanted to buy my mother a scarf, and Vivien turned right around and reported it to Otto.

That night, he sat across the dining table, his tone as flat as if he were scolding a child who didn't know any better.

"Deidre, I had you quit so you could rest and carry the baby, not so you could learn from those small-minded people who marry in and then scheme every way they can to claw money out of my hands."

I rushed to explain.

"I didn't. That day was my mom's sixtieth birthday. You'd promised to come back with me to celebrate, but you had something come up, so I bought a scarf in your place—"

Otto's face went cold.

"In my place?"

"Deidre, don't go using my name to curry favor with your family."

"Today it's a scarf. Tomorrow will you have me buying them a house, a car?"

"Since you've married into the Gilbert family, you should keep your distance from your old family. Better to cut it off clean now, before they drag you down, and me with you."

That was the first time the thought of divorce stirred in me.

But the next day, when Otto came home, he carried an elegant gift box.

He wrapped his arms around me from behind, his voice low and rough.

"Deidre, I'm sorry."

"I spoke too harshly yesterday."

"It's just that I've seen too many women throw themselves at me for money."

"Leah swore up and down she loved me too, back then, and in the end she dumped me for better prospects."

"She made me feel like there's hardly anyone in this world who truly loves me, the person. So the moment you bring up money, I overreact."

He buried his face in my shoulder, as though he really were worn down to the bone.

The hurt in my heart suddenly turned into aching tenderness for him.

After that, I lived carefully by his rules, trying to prove that what I loved was him, not his money.

But later, while washing his clothes, I found a shopping receipt in the pocket of his coat.

It listed the date Leah was returning to the country.

It also listed the diamond bracelet he'd given her, worth seven figures.

And under that gift box he'd given me, tucked beneath it, was a promotional card.

Free with any qualifying purchase.

I stood in the laundry room a long time, holding that flimsy little card.

That sincerity I'd been killing myself to prove, in his eyes, had been worth nothing from start to finish.

The second time I thought about divorce came in that very moment.

That night, my emotions had churned too hard, and in the middle of the night a pain gripped my belly, cold sweat breaking out layer after layer.

Otto rushed into the bedroom with the color drained from his face, scooped me up, and ran for the hospital.

The doctor said my condition was dangerous and that the pregnancy needed to be stabilized immediately.

Otto stood outside the emergency room and, for the first time, lost every shred of his composure.

"I don't want to save the baby! Save the mother! Did you hear me?! I said save the mother!!"

When I woke, he was sitting at the edge of the hospital bed, his eyes bloodshot, his arm still wrapped in bandages.

Vivien whispered to me that on the way to the hospital, the car had nearly collided with a delivery truck.

It was Otto who had thrown himself over me to shield me, his arm cut deep by the shattered glass, more than a dozen stitches.

And he hadn't even waited for the anesthetic to take hold before running back to the room to watch over me.

I shrank away from the arm reaching to hold me and asked softly,

"Otto, what exactly do you mean by all this?"

Otto looked at me with reddened eyes.

"All because of one gift, you're going to put us through all this. Is that it?"

"Leah just got back to the country. That gift was nothing more than common courtesy."

"You only saw a seven-figure necklace, but you didn't see that every single thing in this house, all of it, I bought for you and the baby."

"You couldn't sleep well, so I had a mattress custom-made for you."

"You couldn't stand the smell of cooking oil, so I came home right after work to make you soup."

"I painted the nursery with my own hands. I made the furniture for our child with my own hands."

"I've worked to be a good husband, a good father, and never imagined that in your eyes, none of it could measure up to one necklace."

He pressed a hand over his wound, looking at me with disappointment.

"Deidre, I can give you so much love. I'd give up my own life for you and the baby."

"But I can't give you money. I don't want money mixed into what we have."

After that, he started a cold war with me.

Whatever I said, he acted as if he hadn't heard it.

Every night he claimed he had to work late, and he slept in a separate room from me.

He even went out of his way to needle me, saying I claimed to love him with my mouth while my heart only cared about his money,

just waiting for me to back down, explain, and apologize.

But with Leah he grew closer and closer, joining her for dinners, taking her to gallery openings, throwing money around to make her happy.

Vivien tried to reason with me.

"Ma'am, the master is only sulking. He loves you so much. The money may not be in your hands, but isn't all of it spent on you and the baby?"

"If I were you, I'd hurry and apologize, and promise never to fight with him over money again."

I opened my mouth, but my chest was knotted tight with misery.

I asked myself,

"Deidre, is that necklace really so important?"

I looked at the floor scattered with the baby toys he'd carved by hand and the nursery he'd painted himself,

and for one moment, I truly wavered.

But it was right then that my father was diagnosed with kidney failure.

I set aside my pride to plead with Otto, and didn't even dare call it anything but a loan.

Yet all he gave me was disgust and disappointment.

"Deidre, how are you still like this?"

In that moment, I finally understood.

What I cared about was never that one necklace.

It was that Otto's love was like an exam I could never pass.

I gave everything I had to prove my heart was true, and still he found me wanting;

yet Leah didn't have to do a thing, and he'd already scored her a perfect mark.

Now, this was the third time I wanted a divorce.

This time, I was going to go through with it.

I waited for Otto on the living room sofa all night long.

From dark until dawn, the study door stayed shut.

Through that one door, I could hear Leah's laughter drifting out now and then, and Otto's deliberately lowered, soothing voice.

I sat on the sofa, gripping that divorce agreement in my hand, and what had started as fury faded, until in the end all that was left was numbness.