I could even hear him over the phone, gently comforting Kate Bennett as she cried over her dead dog.

The exact opposite of how he'd reacted when he heard I was hemorrhaging.

For me, that contrast hurt worse than the pain itself.

Meryl couldn't hold back. She tore into Bartholomew right then and there: "Kate just lost a dog, and look at you groveling like a servant! Anyone who didn't know better would think the two of you gave birth to that mutt! Bartholomew, go to hell!"

In my most helpless moment, only Meryl stayed by my side.

She carried me on her back, her small, thin body straining under my weight.

Every step was clumsy and labored, but with each one she was racing death itself on my behalf.

I never once imagined that, of everyone in my life with no blood tie to me, the person who cared about me most would be my best friend.

In the end, she dragged me all the way to the hospital.

By some stroke of luck I kept my life, but the price was that she lost her own child.

Meryl's condition was a little less severe than mine, and after her surgery she stayed right beside me.

I buried my face against her, the tears falling and refusing to stop.

"Meryl, I'm so sorry," I said, sick with guilt. "I'm the reason you lost your baby."

Seeing me cry, she rubbed my back to soothe me. "Don't go piling every fault on yourself. This was never on you. It's the fault of those three good-for-nothings joined at the hip!"

Meryl had the sharpest tongue of any friend I'd ever had, and she was just hitting her stride when her surgeon husband called.

"Meryl, what did you just call my brother on the phone? My brother's a lawyer. The Bar Association rules are crystal clear: once an attorney accepts a client, he can't refuse to represent them without good cause. How old are you two? Can't you act like reasonable adults?"

"A miscarriage, a divorce. You'll stoop to lies this shameless, all just to keep the two of us chained to your apron strings? Is that the only thing that'll satisfy you?"

"You tell Zelda to learn when to stop. Keep this up, and she'd better watch out that she doesn't get burned playing with fire."

Walter hung up, still cursing under his breath, and Meryl was shaking with rage.

I said softly, "It's fine. No clinging, no explaining, no fighting. At least this way we keep the last shred of our dignity."

My words about dignity couldn't stop the two of us from crying in a way that was anything but dignified.

We wept in each other's arms, and every hurt we'd swallowed over these past few years finally broke loose all at once, like a levee giving way to a flood.

The truth was, we'd known all along it would end like this.

From the moment at the engagement party when Kate slipped the ring meant for my finger onto her own instead, I should have seen this day coming.

The ring had been custom-sized to my finger, so once it was on hers, it wouldn't come off.

I'd angrily demanded to know why she would do that, and she burst into tears, apologizing, insisting she hadn't meant to.

She even started wailing that she'd cut off her own finger before she'd let it ruin my engagement party.

That teary, pitiful display sent Bartholomew into a fury.

"It's just a wedding ring. If you want one, I'll buy you another. But is it really necessary to torment Kate like this? You think she did it on purpose? Now you want her to cut off her own finger? Zelda, how did I never see before what a heartless woman you are?"

I shot back, "Bartholomew, she's the one who said she'd cut off her finger."

"If you hadn't pushed her so hard, would Kate ever have gotten to that point? Kate grew up with me. I know exactly what kind of person she is: kind, generous, and proud. She's practically my own little sister, and she'll be your sister too. Why would you push your own sister like this?"

Kate was the one who'd ruined my engagement party, yet by the time it came out of Bartholomew's mouth, somehow I was the one in the wrong.

It was Meryl who stepped in and rescued me. "You love wearing other people's rings that much, huh? Fine. Take it. Take them all!"

And with that, in a fit of temper, she slid her own ring onto Kate's finger too.

"Meryl! Have you lost your mind? Do this, and neither of us has an engagement ring left!" Walter's eyes went round with fury.

Meryl didn't so much as blink. "Your own brother said it. 'It's just a wedding ring.' It's an engagement party for two couples. I can hardly stand there flashing a diamond while my best friend's left standing there with nothing, can I?"

That was how fiercely she protected me back then.

Three years later, the one protecting me most was still her.

Only this time, the price she paid was far too high.

Meryl and I both had to stay in the hospital a few days for observation.

Once we'd poured out all our bitterness and bared our hearts, we lay there scrolling through TikTok.

And sure enough, Kate was showing off their "sibling bond" again.

A photo of the three of them, Kate in the middle, Bartholomew and Walter on either side, cheeks pressed to hers.

Exactly the way Meryl had once described them: conjoined twins.

【More than friends, not quite lovers. Whenever I'm at my lowest, you two are always by my side. Thank you to my two wonderful brothers!】

The two of us couldn't resist tapping into the comments, and they ran the whole gamut:

"Getting all the perks of love while calling it friendship. Genuinely jealous."

"Friends last longer than lovers. So jealous you've got two brothers like that!"

"You three are so close the whole world thinks you're the couple, and only you don't realize it…"

Before all this, Kate was forever posting photos like these, one after another.

At first Meryl and I would confront them and pick fights. Later, all we could do was swallow it ourselves.

Now, though, we just looked at each other and smiled.

"What are you thinking about?"

"How to word the divorce papers. How to split the assets. How to calculate emotional damages."

We might have been stuck in the hospital, but Meryl and I hadn't been idle.

We got in touch with the law firm, drew up the divorce agreement, and had someone deliver the papers to Bartholomew.

His call came in almost immediately.

On the line, he was practically hysterical. "Zelda Pruitt, you did this on purpose, didn't you?"

"What did I do?"

"You hired another lawyer to serve divorce papers on me, a lawyer. If that's not you deliberately humiliating me, what is it? Now everyone at the firm, top to bottom, knows about it. Happy now? Zelda, you won't rest until you've turned my whole world against me, will you?"

Being blamed by Bartholomew, having it all flipped back on me. Before, I'd have beaten myself up over it, apologized to him.

But this time, it wasn't a drill. It was the real thing.

I said coldly, "There's no need to turn anyone against you. Just agree to leave me, and I'll be lighting candles in thanks. Since you've already received the divorce papers, if there's no problem with them, go ahead and sign."

"Oh-ho. Zelda, quite the attitude on you these days. You really think carrying a Gray family heir means you can do whatever you please, don't you?"

From the other end of the line came Kate's simpering little voice.

Then, in an instant, she shifted her tone. "Oh, you're on the phone with your wife? Oops, did I say something wrong? She didn't hear that, did she?"

Bartholomew said, unbothered, "It's fine. So what if she heard? You're my sister. What's wrong with us living together?"

"Oh, brother, don't say it like that. She's always misreading how close we are, getting jealous over nothing. And now she's pregnant. As her little sister, I really should give her some slack."

"Heh. If she had even half your sense, she wouldn't be picking fights with me over nothing."

Bartholomew turned to me. "Zelda, you heard all that? Even while you're causing me all this trouble, Kate's still sticking up for you. You really ought to take a page from her book. Anyway, we've got something urgent to deal with these next few days. Consider me generous, letting you two best friends carry on. But watch how far you push it. Provoke us for real, and I'll treat these papers as the real thing."

I'd thought I could face all of it calmly now.

But picturing the three of them and their sordid little arrangement, my heart clenched, again and again, aching.

Ever since I got together with Bartholomew, I'd swallowed everything, bent over backward for him at every turn. And in his eyes I still didn't measure up to that adopted sister of his, not by half.

"Did that son of a bitch say something ugly to you again? You're too soft on him. You shouldn't even take his calls! From now on, I'll answer them. I'll cuss him out till he drops dead!"

Coming from my best friend, the swearing sounded downright pleasant.

Over the days that followed, the two of us nursed ourselves back to health.

To my surprise, when we didn't reach out to them, they didn't reach out to us either.

When I really thought about it, it was pathetic.

I didn't know where those three had gone, but at least right now, in their eyes, we were still pregnant women.

And yet they could go more than a week without so much as calling their own pregnant wives.

It wasn't until that day, when Kate's posts popped up in my feed again, that we learned where they were.

They'd gone to a small-town chapel. The reason: to bury the dog that had been mauled to death, Kate's dog.

His adopted sister's dead dog mattered more to them than their pregnant wives.

Come to think of it, my best friend had cussed Bartholomew out perfectly: anyone who didn't know better would think the two of you gave birth to that dog!

This time, I laughed, and let it go.

All I wanted now was a quiet divorce.

After we'd finished the hospital discharge paperwork, I texted Bartholomew: "Bartholomew, tomorrow morning at ten, meet me outside the county clerk's office. Remember to bring your brother."

Bartholomew called me, but I didn't pick up. I hung up on the spot and blocked him on every channel right away.

Because everything I had left to say to him, I'd already said in that message.

As for my baby, and my best friend's, they couldn't just be gone like this, without a reckoning.

After leaving the hospital, we went to the police station.

If the yoga ball had burst because of something I did, then I'd chalk it up to bad luck and accept it.

But every movement I'd made was a set exercise the instructor had taught me.