Then he turned to me, his voice hoarse and pleading. “Angela, if you don’t like the necklace, I’ll buy you something else. Whatever you want, I’ll do it. Just don’t divorce me. Please. Ethan can’t live without his mother, and I can’t live without you.”
He sounded like a man bargaining with the last of his dignity. For a moment, the old tenderness flickered, and I wondered if any of it had once been enough.
I looked at his reddened eyes, then at Ethan’s tear-streaked little face. My heart clenched tight, like something inside me had been caught in a vice.
And yet the word 'okay' refused to leave my lips, stuck in my throat where it burned.
“The divorce papers are already in your email.” I kept my eyes down, reaching for the diapers on the shelf and arranging them one by one. “Sign them as soon as possible. We can negotiate custody, but the marriage must end.”
“Angela!” Jonathan’s voice cracked as it rose, edged with a despair he could barely keep down. “What more do you want from me? I’ve given you all my money, all my time. No matter how troublesome, if you wanted it, I made it happen. What else do you want from me?”
His sudden outburst startled Ethan, who started crying even louder.