I pulled myself out of my thoughts and fixed my gaze on him. "This dress has nothing to do with you, does it?"
"I didn't buy it." He said it to Noreen, not to me.
Displeasure flickered across Noreen's face. She'd clearly wanted to humiliate me, to send me out the door with barely a scrap of clothing on my back.
She pointed at my necklace. "I like that necklace. You're not seriously letting her keep it?"
Dale wouldn't even look at me. "Leave the necklace."
Today I'd confirmed I was pregnant. That was supposed to be the best news of my life.
Even after Dale brought up the divorce, I hadn't planned on making a scene. Not today.
But he just kept pushing.
This necklace was a gift from my father for my eighteenth birthday, crafted from the finest materials by one of the world's most renowned jewelers.
I'd worn it every day since, and it was my pre-marital property. Dale knew that perfectly well.
"Dale Fleming, don't push your luck. This necklace has nothing to do with you."
"How does it have nothing to do with him? Renata, you're the one being unreasonable here." Mrs. Fleming swept in from outside the door. "Everything in this house, down to the last blade of grass, was earned by Dale's hard work."
"And somehow when it comes to you, none of it's connected?"
"All these years you've been eating his food, living off his money. He's not even asking you to settle that tab in the divorce."
"One little necklace, and you insult him? Saying he's pushing his luck? The only one pushing her luck here is you."
"Take off the necklace and give it to Noreen."
I ignored Mrs. Fleming entirely. My eyes stayed locked on Dale. "Dale Fleming. I'm asking you one more time. Does this necklace have anything to do with you?"
"Renata, I was right there when my brother bought you that necklace."
Zoey Fleming. Dale's older sister, and once upon a time, my closest friend. She'd arrived too.
She went on, her tone casual and certain: "I even asked Dale to buy me one just like it, but it turned out to be a one-of-a-kind piece. Don't tell me you've forgotten?"
Mrs. Fleming shot me a sideways glance. "Ungrateful wretch. As if she'd remember anything."
I remembered everything. They were the ones who had forgotten.
Back then, it was Zoey who told me her family was struggling, that her mother lay awake every night worrying about finding Dale a wife.
She said she knew I wasn't the shallow, materialistic type. She asked me to give her brother a chance.
On our wedding day, Mrs. Fleming had wept with joy, saying that finding a daughter-in-law as sensible as me was a blessing from their ancestors.
When exactly had all of that changed?
In the beginning, Dale had nothing. When we married, I'd asked for only a token bride-price of six thousand six hundred dollars.
No house. No car.
I didn't choose a partner based on those things. I cared about character and ability.
As for money, I could handle that myself.
My family placed certain financial restrictions on us children before we had kids of our own, but even with those restrictions, the resources I could access were more than enough to send Dale's career into the stratosphere.
It seemed none of them had ever stopped to wonder why a man with no connections, no background, no family name had managed to sail through business without a single setback.
And as Dale's fortunes grew, Zoey started putting on airs around me, bossing me around like it was her birthright as the older sister-in-law.
Mrs. Fleming began finding fault with everything I did.
Dale's temper grew shorter by the year. I told myself that was just how marriage worked. You adjusted. You compromised.
Now I could see how wrong I'd been.
My silence only made Mrs. Fleming angrier. She barked at me.
"What are you standing there for?"
"Take off the necklace and give it to Noreen."
Noreen sat there watching me with a half-smile that didn't quite reach her eyes, dripping with provocation.
As if to say: So what if you were his wife for six years? The moment I walk back in, you step aside.
I didn't want these people and their ugliness to ruin today for me. I didn't want to waste my anger on trash.
