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.

It was their faulty equipment that caused my miscarriage. So I was going to hold the yoga studio and the instructor accountable.

After the officers looked into it and gathered what they could, we learned something that didn't look good: ever since my accident, the yoga instructor had never come back to work.

As luck would have it, the yoga studio's surveillance camera had broken too. There was no physical evidence of how, exactly, I'd fallen.

The officers blamed me. Why hadn't I reported it right away?

I wanted to.

But in this city, the only family I had was off keeping her adopted sister company at a funeral for her dog.

I truly couldn't bring myself to tell them the truth. I could only chalk it up to bad luck.

"Here's what we'll do. We'll investigate as best we can. If anything turns up on your end, tell us right away."

With no other choice, my best friend and I left the police station.

We weren't divorced yet, but there was no way either of us was ever going back to that house.

We found a place to rent, and, dragging our still-unhealed bodies, we cleaned it, worn out.

Honestly, the place was small and damp, but to us it felt more like home than that house ever had.

At dinner, Bartholomew called from a different phone.

"Zelda, where did you go? Do you have any idea? The house got broken into!"

I said calmly, "Nobody broke in. I went through it. It's a little messy, but I only took what belongs to me. If something of yours is missing, go report it to the police. Don't shout at me."

"Zelda, what exactly do you want? I was gone for over ten days. I figured you'd have cooled off by now. What is it? Can't shake this crazy streak of yours this time?"

"Two women shacking up together never leads to anything good. Are the two of you just tired of having it easy?"

Every word of our conversation reached Meryl, sitting right beside me.

She was a woman of her word. She snatched the phone out of my hand and let Bartholomew have it. "Your parents had real foresight when they named you two. Truly heartless, both of you! You three inbred lovebirds can go enjoy your easy life together. My best friend and I can't afford it! Tell Walter this: the divorce is happening, no matter what. Whoever backs out is a bastard!"

After that tirade, Bartholomew didn't even get a chance to talk back before she hung up on him.

Then we blocked every account tied to Bartholomew, Walter, and Kate.

At eight the next morning, Meryl dragged me to the vanity and fussed over my makeup.

"It's a divorce, not a wedding. Is all this really necessary?"

"Of course it's necessary. Think about it. How long has it been since either of us wore makeup, ever since we got pregnant? Divorce is divorce, but a woman still has to do things for herself."

I admired Meryl's optimism. Honestly, if she hadn't been by my side through all of it, rubbing off on me, I don't know whether I could have made it through this.

We put on our makeup and slipped into our little dresses, and in us you could faintly see the shadows of those two showstopping campus queens we'd been back in school.

Just then, a knock came at the door.

We opened it, startled, and there at the threshold, to our surprise, stood Kate.