His Love Was a Test I Could Never Pass

Just before dawn, I couldn't hold out any longer and drifted off against the couch, half-conscious.

Somewhere between sleep and waking, someone gently laid a blanket over me.

My eyes snapped open and I grabbed his wrist.

Otto froze mid-motion.

He looked down at me, and for a single instant something panicked flickered in his eyes before his face hardened again.

Clutching at his sleeve, I asked hoarsely,

"The divorce agreement. Did you read it?"

Otto's expression went cold in an instant.

"Deidre, are you done making a scene?"

He pulled his hand back, like he'd been holding it in all night and finally couldn't anymore.

"You want to divorce me over three hundred thousand dollars?"

I looked at him, and suddenly the whole thing felt so absurd I almost laughed.

"Otto, that money is what's keeping my father alive."

"You're willing to buy Leah's dog a four-hundred-thousand-dollar collar, but you won't lend me three hundred thousand to save my dad's life?"

Otto's fists clenched, his face dark.

"The money is mine. How I spend it is my business. It's none of yours."

I stared at him, numb.

"But don't forget."

"For this marriage, for our child, I gave up my career on my own."

"All those years of salary, bonuses, my savings from before the wedding—I handed every cent of it to you."

"You were so afraid I was after the Gilbert family's money that you wouldn't even let me live in the apartment your family had ready. You insisted we buy our own place."

"This home, I bought it myself. I paid the down payment myself."

My voice was cracking, little by little.

"Otto, all I asked was to borrow three hundred thousand."

"After everything I've given you over the years, isn't that more than three hundred thousand already?"

Otto's face was ugly.

But what rose in his eyes wasn't guilt. It was disappointment.

"Deidre, you're tallying up money with me now?"

He looked at me like it pained him to the core.

"I love you so much I'd give up my own life for you and the baby, and now you're counting dollars with me?"

He stepped back half a pace, as if he were finally seeing me clearly.

"Leah was right after all."

"You married me for the money."

"You never brought it up before because the time wasn't right."

"The second something happens to your dad, you start figuring out how to pull money out of my hands."

A dry, hollow laugh escaped me.

"Think whatever you want."

I pushed the divorce agreement across to him.

"I want a divorce. I won't take a single cent of your money. All I want is to sell the house and take back the down payment I paid."

Otto's face turned to ice.

"No way! I won't divorce you."

"This house is our marital home! You don't get to sell it! My name is on it too, and as long as I don't sign, you can't sell it. Don't even dream about getting a cent."

I looked at him, and suddenly I didn't even have the strength left to argue.

"Otto, you say you love me."

"And yet you'd stand there and watch my father die."

I said softly,

"Your love. It's terrifying."

Otto pressed his lips into a thin line, as if my words had stung him.

But in the end he only turned and walked toward the study.

"Think it over carefully."

"Kidney failure is a bottomless pit."

"You can choose the family you came from, the one that'll need you to keep pouring money into it forever, or you can choose me and the baby."

"Deidre, it's your decision."

The study door closed again.

Otto seemed to have forgotten that before I became a housewife, I was a lawyer.

And what I was best at was divorce cases.

I'd left one last shred of dignity for our marriage, but now he'd torn it away.

Otto's threats meant nothing to me anymore.