“Don't worry. I'll go on being your wife.”
“And this child can call you Daddy too.”
She talked about it like a partnership she'd already worked out down to the last clause.
Her tone was almost reasonable.
“But just because I'm pregnant, don't think you can force me to cut things off with Sebastian.”
Sebastian reached up and stroked the watch on his wrist.
That watch was my graduation gift to him.
He'd told me he was nervous about his first business dinner, afraid he'd embarrass himself.
I fastened it on his wrist with my own hands.
He let out a soft laugh and looked at me, smug.
“Ulysses, why don't you stick around and watch?”
“Could be a good lesson.”
“Wouldn't want Sally to keep finding you boring.”
Something turned over in my stomach.
Sebastian, though, had finally peeled off that mild, dutiful mask, and his voice grew lighter and breezier by the second.
“You taught me how to read, how to drive, how to talk at a dinner table.”
“But you never seemed to figure out how to make a woman unable to leave you. Want me to teach you that?”
Sally frowned.
“Sebastian.”
Like she was scolding him for going too far.
Yet her hand reached out and pulled him back to her side, shielding him as naturally as breathing.
All at once I remembered seven years ago.
The first time Sally came to me for investment.
She'd worn a business suit washed pale with age, her palms sweating from nerves.
No one believed in her project.
I gave her that first round of money, and I opened my own network to her.
To marry her, I broke with the Gilbert family.
My sister, Glenda, pointed at me and snapped,
“Ulysses, you'll regret this sooner or later.”
Back then I only thought she didn't understand Sally.
I said,
“She's not like the others.”
“She didn't come close to me for the Gilbert money.”
Later, my inheritance was cut off, and I was thrown out of the old Gilbert estate.
Sally held me and cried, swearing she'd never wrong me, not in this lifetime.
I believed her.
I stood with her from a single cramped office.
Sat with her through pitches to investors, through all-nighters rewriting proposals.
Outside, people called her Ms. James, said she was young and brilliant.
She'd heard it long enough that she'd probably forgotten.
Who put her in the chair she was sitting in.
When I said nothing, Sally finally started to lose patience.
“Ulysses, don't blow this up into something bigger.”
“You're a Gilbert. No one understands keeping up appearances better than you.”
“I'll give you all the respect you deserve.”
“As for Sebastian, I won't shortchange him either.”
“The two of you both matter a great deal to me.”
Both of us mattered.
I stared at her for a few seconds, and then I laughed.
“Sally.”
“You married me and actually thought that made you one of us?”
Her face darkened in an instant.
“Ulysses, what's that supposed to mean?”
I didn't answer. I just slid the wedding band off my ring finger.
That ring. The night I broke with the Gilbert family, she'd put it on me with her own hands.
She said she'd love only me, for the rest of her life.
Thinking about it now, it just felt filthy.
I dropped the ring into the trash without a second thought.
Sebastian's eyes flicked toward it on reflex, and something greedy flashed through them.
I caught it, and I laughed softly.
“Like it? Go on, fish it out.”
“The things I throw away, haven't you always loved those?”
Sebastian's face flushed red.
Sally finally rose to her feet.
“Ulysses, don't push it too far.”
“Sebastian's already suffered enough.”
Suddenly I laughed.
“Fine.”
“Since he's so talented, let's all learn something from him.”
With that, I took out my phone and started recording.
The lens trained on Sebastian.
