I got out, and I took the papers with me.
Paige Matthews was waiting downstairs.
The second I stepped off the elevator she took my suitcase from me and steered me toward her car.
She didn't say anything until my seatbelt was on and we'd pulled out of the complex.
"Did you and Donald have a fight?"
I leaned against the window. The scenery kept sliding backward, and it made me a little dizzy.
I shook my head weakly. "No."
"Then you..."
"I want a divorce!"
"What?"
Paige slammed on the brake.
The car behind almost rear-ended us, then swerved around, the driver cursing out the window.
Paige rolled her window down, apologized over and over, then pulled her head back in.
"What happened? Did Donald cheat on you?"
I looked at the worry on her face and stayed quiet.
I didn't know what to say.
Donald and I had always gotten along well.
He was willing to smooth things over with me, willing to spend money on me.
Paige had teased me more than once, calling Donald a boyfriend who treated me like a doted-on daughter.
He was patient enough, and he spoiled me enough.
And yet a man like that could, one day, complain to an outsider that his own wife was a lunatic, that he regretted marrying her.
Maybe my face was too miserable, because Paige suddenly didn't want to hear it.
She turned back to the wheel and waved a hand at me.
"Okay, okay, if you don't want to talk about it, we won't."
"Rest for a bit. I'll get you home."
The car started moving again.
I leaned back against the window, but my eyes couldn't settle on anything.
That night, after a shower, she and I lay under the covers.
With the lights off it was pitch dark, and no matter what I did I couldn't fall asleep.
I said Paige's name.
She rolled toward me, and her answer came soft in the dark.
I waited a long time, long enough that her breathing had gone light and even.
Only then did I speak again.
"Paige, he said... he never really wanted that child anyway."
Paige shot up in bed.
"He said that to your face?"
"No. He said it to someone else."
"To who?"
I lowered my eyes. Something in my chest felt like it had been filled with dead, stagnant water.
"I don't know."
"That dog of a man. I'm going to call him and rip him apart."
She turned to feel for her phone on the nightstand, and I caught her arm.
I said, "Don't. There's no point."
Paige sighed and lay back down, still fuming on my behalf.
"You went through all that suffering to give him a child, and he can say something like that?"
"If he didn't want it, why didn't he say so back then?"
"Putting you through all that for nothing..."
If there was anything about these five years married to Donald that hadn't gone smoothly, it was the matter of having a child.
We'd gone to every hospital, big and small, and never once found out why I couldn't get pregnant.
The days went by, one after another, until Donald's mother couldn't sit still any longer.
She called the two of us back to the old house and suggested we try IVF.
Donald didn't refuse.
After that, we started going in and out of hospitals constantly.
The first time I came out of the operating room, my whole body felt hollow, my face drained white.
Donald was terrified. He said we should stop.
Seeing how much it hurt him, how could I keep letting him carry that weight?
So from then on, whenever I went to the hospital, I had Paige come with me instead.
Paige cried every time.
She knew better than anyone how much I feared the operating table.
Because my mother died on an operating table.
I was only five then.
Over and over, I forced myself past that enormous, bone-deep fear.
And in the end, he said... he never really wanted that child anyway.
I said, "Paige, I need you to look into something for me."
