I stared at Burton, my mouth twisting.
"I thought you weren't bankrupt. So how are you so broke now that you can't even set them up in a place of their own? You have to move them in here, like a cuckoo squatting in another bird's nest."
His face soured, but he reined in his temper and tried to soothe me.
"Laurel, Gabriella and the others have lived here four years. They're settled. Don't make a scene over nothing."
I let out a thin laugh, and something in my chest twisted sharp.
Four years.
The moment Burton faked the bankruptcy and moved us out, he'd moved Gabriella and her daughter in.
He'd told me this place had been sold.
So it turned out it had only become a little nest for him and someone else.
I had nothing more to waste on either of them. I walked straight up to Burton and slapped a divorce agreement down in front of him.
"Sign it. I keep custody of our son, and we split the marital assets down the middle."
He frowned at the papers. When he looked up again, he rubbed at the space between his brows like a tired man.
"Laurel, do you really have to carry on like this?"
"Back then, I had my reasons. Felicia was diagnosed with a heart condition the moment she was born, and at the same time you were forever picking fights with me, using our son to chain me to your side."
"You had nothing to do all day except watch me like a hawk, all nerves, never letting go. If I hadn't pretended to go bankrupt, how would you ever have given me any freedom?"
"Felicia was little. Gabriella was still being harassed by her ex-husband from time to time. They needed me."
"You're a mother too. You have a child too. Can't you find it in you to understand me, just a little?"
Burton's lofty reasons and his accusations were like two great hands, tearing my heart to shreds.
Gabriella smoothed back her hair and smiled as she coaxed me.
"Laurel, Burton loves all of you too. From now on you'll never want for anything. You stay on as Mrs. Farley. It doesn't matter if my daughter and I have to put up with a little hardship—just don't make things difficult for him."
He looked at her with a tenderness I knew, and right in front of me and our son, he laced his fingers through hers.
I clenched my jaw, my nails biting deep into my palms.
Less than a year after I gave birth to our son, I found a torn pair of stockings in Burton's pocket.
On his computer, in a chat window he'd forgotten to close, were screen after screen of sweet nothings between him and Gabriella.
I was already being torn apart by postpartum depression, and whatever sense I had left snapped. I went straight to his company and, in front of everyone, slapped him across the face, crying.
"Burton, Gabriella is five years older than you. She has a husband. And you go chasing after her, the other man wrecking someone else's family? Your son isn't even a year old. Have you no shame at all?"
His face went dark, but he didn't argue back. He forced me home.
That night he fired Gabriella, knelt in front of me, and swore on everything that he would never see her again.
After that I kept him on a short leash. He had to come straight home after work, I went through his phone every day, and every call he got, I had to know who it was from.
Burton grew more and more silent, but he submitted meekly to all of it.
Until a year later, when an investment failed, the company went bankrupt, and he was buried in debt.
I poured everything I had into earning money, trying to help Burton through the crisis, and I no longer had the energy to keep watch over him and Gabriella.
But all of it had only ever been a play he'd staged.
I looked at the easy calm on his face, shut my eyes hard, and let it go. I didn't want to dig into any of it anymore.
"Fine. We divorce, then. I won't make things difficult for you."
After our son was born, I'd been tangled up in those dark postpartum moods—impulsive, quick to anger, gripped by a possessiveness over Burton that bordered on obsession.
But after these four years of wear, facing betrayal again, I found I actually had the courage to walk away.
Our son had been standing quietly beside me the whole time, and his small, warm hand made me feel steady.
