The morning of our divorce, my husband walked in with his mistress on his arm—both dressed like they’d already claimed the life they thought they stole from me.

Her gaze dips deliberately to your stomach and back to your face.

“And you, well,” she says, smiling that knife-edged smile, “you have different priorities now.”

Your mother makes a sound under her breath, the kind that belongs to women who have lived long enough to recognize evil even when it arrives wearing expensive lipstick. But you open the door before she can speak.

The rain is colder than you expected.

You step out slowly, one hand under your belly, one on the top of the door, and meet Rebecca’s eyes with such quiet steadiness that her smile flickers. She expected tears. She expected humiliation. She expected the swollen, abandoned wife to come undone in the parking circle before the hearing even began.

You give her nothing.

“You’re right,” you say. “I do.”

Then you walk past them toward the courthouse doors.

They follow a few paces behind, heels and dress shoes striking wet concrete in an uneven rhythm. You can feel them there without turning around. Damian’s impatience. Rebecca’s smugness. Their certainty that they have already won. People are always most careless when they think the ending belongs to them.