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Jim Gilbert and I were a business marriage, but he was good to me.
He'd cook for me. He'd come pick me up from the office on rainy days.
He played the perfect husband every woman envied, right down to the smallest detail.
On our wedding anniversary, he booked out my favorite restaurant and set up a candlelit dinner.
I thought he was going to propose. Instead, he handed me divorce papers.
"I'll walk away with nothing."
There was something in his eyes I couldn't read.
"I only have one condition. I want to marry your sister."
It hit me like a bolt out of the sky. My sister? The one who'd been sickly since childhood, the one the whole family held in the palm of their hands?
Jim sighed. "Three years ago, if your sister hadn't given up her spot for the heart transplant, you wouldn't have lived to see today."
"I promised her I'd take care of her for the rest of her life."
He used to be the only light in my dark world.
Only now did I understand that this light had never, from the very start, shone for me.
……
I stared at the divorce papers in front of me, my fingers trembling and refusing to stop.
"Jim, say that again. What you just said."
My voice was shaking so badly it barely held together.
Jim frowned slightly. That face that had made my heart race so many times was now nothing but impatience.
"Odie, quit making a scene."
"Tillie's health is fragile. This is what I owe her. It's what you owe her too."
What I owed her?
It was like hearing the funniest joke of the century, and I laughed, cold and short.
"So these three years, every night you shared a bed with me, every night we tangled together, the whole time you were thinking about her?"
Jim didn't deny it. He just slid the pen across the table toward my hand.
"Sign it. It's better for everyone."
"I'll give you enough money that you'll never have to worry about food or a roof for the rest of your life. Call it compensation for these three years."
I grabbed the glass of red wine off the table and threw it straight in his face.
"Jim, you don't even get to talk to me about compensation!"
The red liquid ran down the high bridge of his nose and dripped.
He didn't get angry. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped it away, unhurried and elegant.
"When you're done letting it out, sign. Odette Pruitt, don't force me to settle this in the way you'd least want."
A shudder went through me. I pulled out my phone and called my mother.
She was my last straw.
The phone rang a long time before it connected, the noise of a TV in the background.
"Mom, Jim wants to divorce me. He says he wants to marry Tilda Pruitt!"
I screamed it with everything I had, hoping the woman on the other end would take my side.
Instead, my mother's voice came back irritated.
"What's the big deal? What are you shrieking about?"
"Your sister's health is so poor. Jim's willing to take care of her. That's a good thing."
"You're the older sister. What's wrong with handing your husband over to your sister?"
"Besides, if Tillie hadn't given you that spot back then, you'd have been dead long ago!"
"A person should know how to repay a kindness!"
My fingers went stiff around the phone.
This was coming from my own mother?
"So all of you knew? I was the only one treated like a fool, kept in the dark?"
My mother gave a cold snort on the other end.
"Don't be so ungrateful! Jim said he'll give you money. Hurry up and sign, don't hold up Tillie's happiness."
The call cut off, cold and final.
I looked at the words "Call Ended" on the screen, and my stomach heaved.
What a moving, heaven-shaking performance this was.
I slammed the phone down on the table, and strangely, everything inside me went quiet.
Nothing kills you like a heart that's already dead. So this was what it felt like.
"Jim, you make me sick."
He stood, straightened the suit jacket I'd stained, and looked down at me.
"Think whatever you want. Once the papers are signed, have your lawyer contact me."
"Also, Tillie's moving into the master bedroom tonight. Pack your things and sleep in the guest room for now."
I stared at him, eyes wide, unable to believe it.
"That's my house! That villa was left to me by my grandfather. It's my premarital property!"
Jim's face was cold. He drew a card from his wallet and tossed it on the table.
"This villa. Three years ago I already bought it from your parents at three times the market price. The deed is in my name."
"There's five million on this card. The PIN is your birthday. Call it compensation for moving to the guest room."
He turned and walked out of the restaurant with long strides, without so much as a spare glance for me.
