“Nolan, let's get a divorce. I keep the baby.”

On the other end, a long silence.

But the next second, what came through wasn't his answer. It was Renee's fake, tearful little voice.

“Nolan, did I do something wrong…… Does she hate me even more now……”

Then I heard Nolan cover the mouthpiece, though his voice still came through clear as ever.

He soothed her gently “Don't cry. This has nothing to do with you.”

Only after he'd finished comforting Renee did Nolan pick the phone back up, his voice thick with irritation.

“Prudence, can you not go looking for trouble on a good day like today?”

“I'm warning you. Get back to your room right now and apologize to Renee. Don't push me.”

As if that still wasn't enough, he let out a scornful laugh.

“Divorce? You think I don't know what's going through your head? You just want to use the baby to twist my arm.”

“Let me tell you, you dare bring up divorce, and I'll make sure you never see this child again in your life. Can you afford that?”

I hung up.

One more word and I would have thrown up.

I dragged his number into my block list.

The postpartum contractions and the stitched episiotomy throbbed in waves, a reminder of just how absurd everything I'd just been through was.

“Honey, are you all right?”

The nurse making up my bed couldn't hold back. She'd heard the whole thing.

“That man is a real piece of garbage! When I had my baby, my husband was so worried about me he ran out overnight to borrow money and bought a whole hen to make me soup.”

“How can you put up with this?”

Her words pried open a memory I'd sealed away.

I thought back to that brutal car accident.

Both my legs had been shattered. The doctors said I might spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair.

It was Nolan who cared for me at my bedside, cleaning up after me, never once leaving to change his own clothes, for a full six months.

To scrape together the steep cost of my surgery, he even sold his family's old ancestral home.

The day I was discharged, he carried me on his back, stepping down the hospital stairs one at a time, and said in my ear.

“Prudence, don't be afraid. From now on, I'll be your legs.”

That devotion, that refusal to leave me, once moved everyone. It made me love him with my whole heart for all these years.

But this devotion, when did it change?

Maybe everything changed the moment Renee, under the pretense of being childfree, moved in near our home.

Nolan said she was lonely on her own, that we had to look after her.

So when Renee couldn't sleep, he could drive me out of the master bedroom in the middle of the night and stay up talking with her until dawn.

When I bled in my third trimester, he could turn off his phone to go see the northern lights in Scandinavia with Renee, leaving me lying alone in a cold pool of blood.

He could even take the money I'd set aside for my delivery and buy Renee a discontinued designer bag she'd been pining over.

Every time, he guilt-tripped me with how lonely she was all by herself.

Every time, afterward he numbed me with double the tenderness and remorse.

Living on my hopes for the baby about to be born, I compromised again and again, forgave again and again.

Until today.

I quietly opened my messages and left that family group chat that made me sick.

Nolan's icon quickly popped up with a warning emoji.

【You'd better not regret this.】

I didn't reply.

He thought I'd come crawling back soon enough, like always, wagging my tail and begging him for the baby's sake.

But he didn't know.

This time, I really was done with him.

I lay back down on the bed.

The tearing pain below, mixed with the raw ache as the anesthesia wore off, left me drifting in and out.

I opened my phone and, almost against my will, tapped into Renee's social media feed.

The most recent post had gone up ten minutes ago.

It was a video.

The caption dripped with fake sweetness: "First time being a mom, and I'm a little all over the place! Just helping my bestie carry some of the load with the baby. Don't get the wrong idea, everyone — I'm a committed childfree girl, totally selfless here."

I opened the video.

On the screen, Renee was wearing the nursing nightgown that should have been mine, cradling my daughter clumsily in her arms.

The baby must have been hungry, wailing her heart out against Renee's chest.

Nolan's voice came from off-camera, thick with tenderness and doting.

"Renee, don't panic, the baby's probably hungry. Try this…"

What came next turned my stomach.

Renee actually unbuttoned the nightgown and tried to get my newborn daughter to suckle at a breast that couldn't possibly have any milk.

At the end of the video, she smiled shamelessly into the camera.

"It really feels like there's a connection! Is this the soul-bond of a mother's love?"

A bitter laugh escaped me.

I, the real mother, was lying on a cold hospital bed, enduring searing pain.

And that thief was enjoying everything that should have been mine.

I refreshed the page, and Renee's feed had updated again.

One photo was of the pricey postpartum recovery meals Nolan had ordered for her.

Another was a solid gold longevity pendant charm he'd given her, engraved with the word "godmother."

And another showed the two of them standing together in front of a custom crib, laughing without a care in the world.

That crib, in materials and design, was far more expensive than the one I'd prepared for our child.

In the middle of the night, the baby must have gotten truly, unbearably hungry.

Nolan finally sent me a message.

"Prudence, pump some milk and bring it over. Renee's fed her all day and she's worn out, she needs to rest."

"Don't let your emotions get in the way. The baby's innocent."

"After you drop off the milk, clean up the VIP suite while you're at it. Consider it making it up to Renee for the fright. You scared her pretty badly today."

He didn't say a single word about coming to see me.

I didn't reply.

Instead, I took a screenshot of a corner from Renee's video and sent it over.

The image showed a baby garment cut to shreds.

I demanded an answer: "Why did you let Renee destroy the blessing gown I sewed for our child?"

I'd stayed up night after night making that patchwork blessing gown by hand, stitch by stitch, out of the softest cotton.

I'd embroidered a protection charm onto it, one I'd prayed for.

Nolan's reply came fast, and careless.

"It's a raggedy piece of clothing. What's the big deal."

"Renee said the fabric was too coarse, that it'd scratch the baby's delicate skin, so she used it as a floor mat. So what?"

I bit my lips until they went white.

"Nolan, do you have any idea how much that gown meant to me?"

I remembered how, when I'd first shown that gown to Nolan, he'd held me so tenderly.

My phone buzzed again.

It was Nolan.

"Prudence Fox, can you not be so petty? Making a scene over a raggedy piece of clothing?"

"Take a good look at how dirt-poor your family is. From the day the baby was born until now, not a single cash gift. If Renee hadn't been generous enough to buy the baby a solid gold bracelet to save face, you'd have humiliated me completely!"

I pressed on the screen so hard it crackled, nearly cracking.

"You know better than anyone why my parents won't come to the hospital, don't you?"

The message sent.

On the other end, a dead silence fell.

The memory snapped me back to that gray, rainy day in my second trimester.

I tumbled down the stairs.

Warm liquid soaked through my pants in an instant.

A cramping pain drilled into my belly, wave after wave, gnawing all the way to the bone.

I lay on the freezing floor and, on pure instinct, called Nolan.

The phone rang for a long time before someone finally picked up.

But the voice that came through was Renee's, petulant and dripping with a boastful little edge.

"Hello? Who is this? Can't you see my Nolan's with me at the concert? I told him no phone calls. So annoying."

Behind her, a symphony rose and swelled, lush and refined.

"Help... help me..."

I forced out those three words with everything I had, and the call was cut off without mercy.

I lay there alone in a pool of blood, my mind slowly going dark.

In the end, it was a kind neighbor who found me and called 911.

When I woke, I was in the ICU.

The first faces I saw were my parents, who had come all the way from home.

And the husband who had been in the same city the whole time, keeping another woman company at a concert, never showed up.

The doctor's face was pained as he told me:

"Ms. Fox, you need to prepare yourself. This... may very well be the only child you'll ever have."

That day, for the first time, my parents begged me to divorce, their eyes rimmed red.

I looked down at the faint swell of my belly, thought of how good Nolan had once been to me, and in the end I couldn't bring myself to do it.

And from that day on, my parents and I fell into a cold standoff.

They refused to set foot in the home I shared with Nolan, and they refused even more to look at his hypocritical face.

"Prudence? Prudence, what's wrong?"

Camille Turner's anxious voice pulled me out of the painful memory.

She was my only family in this city, and she'd rushed over the moment she heard.

"Your mom and dad... the truth is, they've been up whole nights, sick with worry. They were just afraid you wouldn't want to see them, and they really couldn't stand the sight of that animal Nolan, so they sent me to check on you first."

As she spoke, she took a thermos and a phone out of her bag.

"This is soup they made for you. And there's a voice message from your dad."

My hands trembled as I opened the message.

It was my mother's voice.

"That good-for-nothing Nolan! Last time Prudence nearly died with the baby, and he was off having a grand old time with that little tramp! Then afterward he knelt in the pouring rain, slapping his own face, crying and swearing he knew he'd been wrong, just to trick Prudence into softening!"

"I regret it so much! I should have thrown him straight out back then! It's my fault, picking a fight with my own daughter... and now I don't even know if she still wants to see us..."

Below that were a whole string of money transfers.

"That's our life savings, the two of us. You give it to Prudence. Tell her, even if she gets divorced, we won't let her suffer one bit of grief in that family! Mom and Dad will always have her back!"

Everything I'd held down all day finally broke open in that moment.

I covered my face and sobbed until my voice went raw, until I nearly passed out.

Only one thought was left in my head.

I was going to take my baby and go back to my parents.

Ignoring the incision that still ached faintly, I grabbed Camille's hand.

"Camille, help me! Help me get a private ambulance. I'm taking my baby home. Now!"

She looked at me and nodded, hard.

She'd just finished arranging the car when Nolan's call came in.

"Renee booked a celebration banquet for the baby at the Millennium Ballroom. She and I are heading over to get things ready. I've put the baby on the bed. You bring the baby over yourself, nine o'clock tonight."

Beside me, Camille was so furious she wanted to curse him out, but I stopped her.

I motioned for her to hurry and bring the baby over.

Nolan, hearing no reaction from my end for a long while, must have taken my silence for agreement, and let out a breath of relief.

"That ratty little blessing gown of yours, I already ordered an identical one online. Don't hold it against her."

"Nine o'clock. Be on time when you make your entrance. Don't embarrass me and Renee in front of the guests."

I said only one word.

"Fine."

The call ended.

I slid the diamond wedding ring off my finger and, without a second's hesitation, dropped it into the trash can by the bed.

Camille came back carrying my sleeping daughter.

Downstairs, the lights of a private ambulance flashed.

Without a single look back, we climbed into the car and drove away from the place that had heaped humiliation on me.

And that man, so busy preparing the celebration with Renee, had no idea.