Chapter 5

The next morning, I transferred my half of the mortgage payment into our joint account and sent Evan the receipt.

He didn’t reply.

At noon, he appeared at the reception desk of the hearing center.

My next patient was due in fifteen minutes.

I didn’t want my coworkers hearing about our marriage, so I took him into an empty testing room.

The moment the door closed, Evan asked, “Why did you only pay half?”

“Because the other half is yours.”

“The bank will try the automatic payment again tonight. This isn’t the time to argue over who owes what.” He held out his phone. The overdue notice filled the screen. “Cover it from your maternity leave account. I’ll pay you back next week.”

I didn’t take the phone.

“Where did your salary go?”

Evan looked away. “Lena’s insurance doesn’t cover all her prenatal care. She also needs rent money and several prescriptions.”

“So you gave your salary to her, and now you want my maternity savings to protect the house.”

“That’s my child too.”

“And this house is your responsibility too.”

He lowered his voice. Lena had just suffered a serious bleed. He couldn’t stop supporting her now.

If I covered the mortgage, he would replace the money in our baby fund as soon as his next project bonus arrived.

I opened the transaction record on my phone.

“When the project ends. When she’s stable. When the baby is born. Every time, you expect me to pay first.”

“Sell the house,” I said.

Evan stared at me. “What?”

“We can’t afford it, and we won’t be living there together. We’ll have it appraised, pay off the mortgage, and split whatever remains.”

“That’s our home. You can’t move out for one day and decide to sell it.”

“I didn’t leave this marriage yesterday. You divided it in two fourteen months ago.”

He paced across the narrow testing room before stopping beside the soundproof window.

“Lena knew we were still married,” Evan said.

The testing room went very quiet.

“How much did she know?”

“She knew we were having problems.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

Evan looked toward the soundproof window. “She knew we still lived together.”

“Did she know we were trying for another baby?”

His silence answered before he did.

“She knew about the fertility clinic,” he admitted. “I told her that having another baby wouldn’t fix what was wrong between us.”

He had turned our hope into evidence that our marriage was already dead.

“How many other people did you tell?”

“A few friends. My mother.”

Every person he named had been invited into a version of my marriage that I had never heard.

The reception chime sounded. My next patient had arrived, but Evan remained in front of the door.

“Cover the mortgage tonight,” he said. “We can argue about the rest later.”

“I already paid my half.”

“Lena’s due date is eleven days before yours. I need enough money to prepare for both babies.”

His phone vibrated on the desk between us.

A message appeared before he could turn the screen over.

LENA: Tell her I’m not giving up the apartment—or you. You promised I would stop coming second before the baby came.

Evan reached for the phone.

I placed my hand over it first.

Lena had not mistaken him for a single man. She had been waiting for him to make me disappear from the arrangement.

The receptionist called my name again.

I turned the screen toward Evan.

“Answer her,” I said. “Tell her which promise you expect me to pay for.”