Chapter 3

"I want a divorce." I couldn't live under the same roof as him anymore.

He stroked my face, gentle as ever.

"There you go, talking nonsense again. You don't have a job, I'm the one supporting you, and there's the baby. How would you get by?"

He knew my parents raised hogs out in the country. He hadn't even let them come to the wedding, said it was too far to travel.

He'd promised he'd take me back home and do it all over again.

But three years of marriage, and he always brushed it off, always too busy.

It wasn't that he cared about sparing my parents the trip, and it wasn't that he was really busy. He just looked down on them for raising hogs out in the sticks.

I should have seen it long ago.

Instead I stayed with him for three years.

Back home, Arthur didn't stop me from picking up my phone. Regina went to him and helped him off with his coat, not sparing me a single glance.

She'd dropped the act completely, like she was just waiting for my baby to be born so she could sweep me out the door.

Then she'd be the rightful Mrs. Sanchez.

The two of them cooed over each other in the kitchen. I went back to the bedroom and messaged Shelby from my phone.

"Got it. They met online. Regina posted a suicide note over her ex-boyfriend, and that's when the scumbag Sanchez reached out to her."

So it turned out Regina had always been this hopeless.

Arthur had her wrapped around his finger.

As my belly grew and the due date closed in, Arthur took leave from the clinic and kept up his devoted-husband image.

He even said his old assistant had quit, so he'd brought Regina on to help.

I had Shelby keep digging, and we learned Regina had been deceived by her ex-boyfriend and could no longer have children.

Arthur wasn't deeply in love with me. He only wanted to borrow my body to give him his child.

I went to Arthur myself and asked what he wanted to name the baby.

Behind his back, I had Shelby look into our assets. I was planning the divorce.

And Regina, seeing how much Arthur seemed to care about me, threw a fit until he agreed to take her out shopping.

Arthur had no choice but to take her. He'd already reinforced the doors and windows and changed the locks.

Only he and Regina had keys.

I'd become a machine they kept penned up to have a baby.

Half an hour later, I called him. Arthur picked up fast.

I said my stomach hurt. Arthur glanced at his phone and told me I was perfectly healthy, body and mind.

"I put a monitoring band on you. Don't try any tricks now. What if you teach the baby bad habits?"

Another half hour passed, and Arthur answered my call again.

"I still don't feel right. Maybe it's coming. Come home."

"The band is a new product the clinic released. It's been through countless trials. Stop playing games. I bought the wontons you like."

Regina was next to him, clamoring to see a movie, and Arthur agreed.

A movie would take at least an hour.

I didn't do what Arthur told me and lie down in the room. I opened the study and sat inside.

At the counseling clinic, Arthur had signed a ten-year contract, the highest tier of treatment they offered.

The day before Regina showed up, he'd brought home a transfer form that needed my signature in the family-consent box.

With me so close to giving birth, of course I hadn't wanted him posted far from me, so I'd never signed it.

Arthur probably didn't know the form was still valid.

I signed it, then called Shelby over.

My belly was heavy, but I forced myself up and fed the transfer papers to her one page at a time through the gap in the door, telling her to take them to the clinic.

"Ma'am, you should have done this a long time ago."

Shelby wasn't someone I'd screened online and interviewed.

My father had sent her over, because he saw how much I liked doing this kind of blogging.

On top of the salary I paid her, she drew another from my father's side.

My father did raise hogs, that much was true, but he supplied the whole country. He'd caught the wave of the times and built it into a corporation long ago.

Even the clinic Arthur worked at had been arranged by my father.

Half an hour later, the person calling Arthur was no longer me but Mr. Osborne from the clinic.

Arthur came rushing back in a panic, and Regina was nowhere behind him.

"If you don't want to see her, you could have just told me. Why sign the consent form?"

He'd be going over there for five years. No communications. No way to reach anyone.

"Arthur, love can't have sand mixed into it."

I was letting them be together. Regina would never have to jump into the sea again.