I was the only one who couldn't stomach a single word of it.
"Alright, enough with the theatrics."
"Go home and clear out the bedroom. She needs to stay at the house for her pregnancy."
Kenneth offered me a few impatient words of comfort, then took Eleanor's hand and got in the car.
Kenneth and I grew up together. Childhood sweethearts, inseparable from the start.
He had no parents. He survived by tagging along with debt collectors on the street corners, scrounging for meals. A miserable existence.
I lost my mother young. My father was a gambler, a drunk, and a man who liked to use his fists. My life wasn't much better.
The year he loved me most, he found out my father planned to hand me over to a casino owner to settle a debt. He broke into my house with a knife pressed to my father's throat.
He cursed the whole time. Broke three of my father's ribs. And took me with him.
"Betty's with me now."
"You touch her again, I'll kill you."
From that day on, he became one of the few lights in my life.
Not many people where we grew up could afford school, but Kenneth hustled on the streets and paid my tuition out of his own pocket.
He said, "I'm not cut out for books. But a girl should get an education."
Later, I spent my days in a school uniform and canvas sneakers, playing the good girl. At night, I'd slip into a black camisole and stockings and follow him around, learning to smoke, to drink, to fight.
At our lowest, we couldn't even afford a clinic visit for a broken bone. We'd split a single bowl of rice between us for the whole day.
I remembered the first time my pinky finger cracked open. He knelt outside the clinic door all night, begging, until they gave him one bottle of medicine.
After that, whenever he looked at my crooked pinky, he'd cry and say he was sorry.
He fought his way up from a nobody running errands on street corners to the boss of the Syndicate, and then to Mr. Matthews in the business world.
I never missed a single step of it.
I thought the red thread between us was made of steel wire, the kind not even the devil himself could cut.
But a girl named Eleanor Harding snapped it without breaking a sweat.
June. A storm rolled in, sudden and savage.
I wandered the streets with no destination, soaked to the bone.
My phone rang.
"Betty, what's your problem?"
"Didn't I tell you to clear out the bedroom?"
The voice on the other end was ice. Colder than the rain hammering my skin.
I said nothing. Hung up.
By the time I got home, I was drenched through.
"Kenneth, stop it, quit messing around."
"Someone might see us."
The moment I opened the door, there they were. Kenneth and Eleanor on the couch, draped over each other, flirting like teenagers.
Eleanor's oversized collar had slipped down, exposing half her collarbone. Kenneth lifted his head from the curve of her neck and looked at me.
"What took you so long?"
"Don't you know we've been waiting for you to get the room ready?"
Not a single word of concern. Not a trace of worry. Just blame.
Something clenched tight around my heart. I genuinely could not understand how we had ended up here.
I shook my head, dizzy, and said nothing. I started walking toward the guest room.
"She's sleeping in the master bedroom with me. You take the guest room."
I stopped mid-step. Pulled my foot back. "Fine."
Two hours later, I'd finished clearing everything out. The moment I sat down, Eleanor appeared.
"Kenneth told me you two have been together thirteen years. Sounds like a long time, I guess."
"But all it took was one night in bed with him, and your thirteen years turned to nothing. Not even worth mentioning."
Gone was the sweet, demure girl from this afternoon. Her eyes glinted with raw ambition.
All that talk about keeping the baby and leaving the father out of it was just talk.
I forced the faintest smile and didn't say a word.
All I wanted now was to leave Kenneth quietly. Leave all of this behind.
Wasting my breath would have been the stupidest thing I could do.
Eleanor tossed out a few more lines. When I gave her nothing in return, she got bored and scurried off to find Kenneth.
