Chapter 2

I pressed a hand to my aching stomach and curled into a more comfortable position in my chair. “You’re right. You’re the one he likes now.”

“But my advice is to quit while you’re ahead. He only loves himself. Right now, you’re young, pretty, and easy to fool, so he treats you well. Give it a few years, and you’ll be the next me.”

“A selfish, cruel man like that isn’t capable of love. I helped him grow up. I saw every ugly part of him, every humiliating moment of his past. He can’t feel powerful in front of me, so he doesn’t like me. He wants to get rid of me.”

“Don’t end up like I did.”

She wouldn’t end up like me.

Because I was dying.

I picked up some vegetables from a roadside stand and went home.

The moment he saw me, he furtively turned his phone facedown.

He didn’t need to hide it. He was terrible at covering his tracks anyway. I’d always known what he was doing.

He stood and took the plastic bag from me. After looking inside, he froze.

“Just vegetables? No meat? I was craving crab.”

With his paycheck, he still expected expensive meals every day. The good food we used to eat had come out of my savings and earnings.

Besides, almost all of his meager salary went toward gifts for Lily.

We rented near downtown so he could sleep a few extra minutes. The rent alone nearly exceeded his paycheck.

I could barely understand how I’d kept us afloat all these years.

I’d said these things to him countless times. This time, I didn’t want to bother.

“We have no money.”

Maybe he felt guilty, because he didn’t press me.

He obediently took the vegetables into the kitchen and handed them to his mother.

When she saw how little I’d bought, she stormed out to yell at me.

“You little bitch! You spent all my son’s money, and this is what you expect him to eat? How did we end up with such a wasteful woman?”

“I should never have let you marry him. All these years, and you can’t even give him a baby! He ought to beat you to death!”

I glanced at Ethan, standing silently nearby as usual, and laughed coldly. “I spent it all? Why don’t you ask your precious son where the money went?”

“Flowers and designer bags every month. You must be loaded.”

His mother had spent most of her life in the rural backcountry, clinging to her backward beliefs. I’d endured years of her baseless abuse.

“And why do you think I never got pregnant?”

“Because your precious son crushes up birth control pills and slips them into my water after we have sex.”

At last, Ethan couldn’t stay silent.

“I just don’t make enough right now. I was worried we couldn’t afford a child…”

Before I could answer, his mother, who was desperate for a grandson, exploded.