I pushed my lunchbox across to him. His face went red, and he swore that once he made money, he'd pay me back tenfold.
After college, he failed the grad school entrance exam three times. I told him it was fine, try again next year.
That year, I worked at the office during the day and pulled shifts at a bubble tea shop at night. Both paychecks went straight to covering his living expenses and exam fees.
When we got married, he couldn't put up a wedding gift.
May said city people didn't do that sort of thing. My parents thought it was unacceptable, but I pushed back and said if he couldn't, he couldn't.
Looking back now, I must have had my brain pickled in grease.
I got up, pulled the wedding portrait off the wall, and tossed it into the storage closet.
Then I dug out the property deed. I'd contact a realtor first thing tomorrow, sell the place, and cut every last tie to the past.
The next morning, I sat in the VIP room of a real estate agency.
The agent finished running the title search, looked up, and his expression went strange.
“Ms. Swanson, this unit was purchased with zero down. Only about ten thousand in mortgage payments have been made so far. The remaining balance is four hundred and seventy thousand dollars.”
My head went blank, like something detonated behind my eyes.
“What did you just say? Four hundred and seventy thousand in debt?”
“Yes. And since the divorce agreement assigns the property entirely to you, the full loan balance transfers to your name.”
Gordon hadn't left me compensation. He'd left me a bottomless pit.
Every month he handed me a thousand dollars for living expenses and claimed the rest went toward the mortgage.
He'd barely paid a cent.
I bolted out of the agency and went straight to the bank to pull our transaction history.
Three full years of joint-account records printed out to over a dozen pages.
I'd figured there had to be at least a hundred thousand left.
The account balance：$3,215.40.
I flipped through the statements. The line items were packed so tight they blurred together, and a chill crawled up my spine.
High-end menswear. A designer cosmetics counter. Five-star hotel afternoon tea. A maternity center consultation fee. None of it had been spent on me.
I checked the credit cards next. All six were maxed out. Over ninety thousand in total. Every single installment plan was under my name.
For three years I'd bought him decent clothes for job interviews, bought May her vitamins and supplements to show filial respect, covered every daily expense for the whole household.
I counted it all up. I'd sunk nearly two hundred thousand dollars of my own money into that family.
He'd been draining me dry, bankrolling another woman on my dime, and on his way out the door, he'd graciously left me $470,000 in debt.
I sat in the bank lobby, clutching that stack of statements.
The edge of the paper sliced my finger. Blood welled up in a thin red line, but I didn't feel a thing.
When someone truly has no shame, nothing in this world can stop them.
Before the cooling-off period was even up, Gordon couldn't wait to start stirring trouble.
Jessica sent me a handful of links and screenshots over iMessage.
“Anna, your ex-husband is next-level trash. Just look at this.”
I tapped on the screenshots. They were from our college alumni group chat.
Someone had posted a three-minute video.
In it, Gordon sat facing the camera, eyes rimmed red, wearing an expression so grief-stricken he could've been delivering a eulogy.
“Hey everyone. Anna and I are about to finalize our divorce.”
“You have no idea what these last three years have been like for me.”
“She had a terrible temper, she was lazy, she didn't lift a finger around the house. I was working, running the household, and paying the mortgage all by myself. And the worst part? She can't have children.”
“Three years I kept that secret from my mother. I carried it for her. My mom blamed me, and I took it, because I'd promised Anna I wouldn't tell a soul.”
