I was nine months pregnant when the courier handed me the envelope that ended my marriage.

There had been no dramatic fight the night before.

No smashed dishes.

No accusations thrown across the kitchen.

The morning had started with rain tapping against the windows and me trying to tie my shoes without crying from the pressure in my back.

I was so close to my due date that even breathing felt like work.

When the doorbell rang, I assumed it was a package for the baby.

We had been getting deliveries for weeks: diapers, blankets, a breast pump I still had not figured out how to assemble.

I shuffled to the door with one hand pressed against the wall, signed for the envelope, and carried it inside.

I remember standing in the foyer under the pale yellow light, opening the seal, and seeing the words Petition for Dissolution of Marriage.

My husband, Grant Ellis, had filed three days earlier.

There was a note clipped to the front.

Just one line in the same slanted handwriting that had once filled birthday cards and little lunchbox notes when we were dating.

I am not coming back.

Don’t make this harder.

My daughter rolled hard inside me at that exact moment, a slow, heavy movement that made me suck in a breath.

I pressed my palm to my stomach and waited for the room to steady.

I had known something was wrong for months.

Grant had become short-tempered and distant as my pregnancy advanced.

He worked later.

He answered questions with one-word replies.

He stopped touching me unless it was the polite, absentminded kind of touch strangers use when handing over change.

But even then, I believed we were in a rough season, not at the edge of a cliff.

Then my phone buzzed.

Grant had texted me.

Be at Westbridge Courthouse at 2.

We can finalize details.

Not Can we talk? Not I’m sorry.

Not Are you okay?

Just instructions.

At two o’clock, the courthouse smelled like wet coats, old paper, and industrial floor cleaner.

Grant was already there in a crisp navy suit, looking rested and almost radiant.

Standing beside him was Tessa Monroe from his office, the woman he had repeatedly told me not to worry about.

I had seen enough between them over the last year to feel uneasy.

Late meetings.

Private jokes.

Texts he hid by turning his screen away.

But whenever I raised it, Grant rolled his eyes and said pregnancy had made me paranoid.

Tessa was just ambitious, just friendly, just part of his team.

Now she stood with one manicured hand wrapped around his forearm like she had won a prize.

Grant glanced at my stomach and grimaced.

“I couldn’t stay with a woman with a big belly like you,” he said.

I still remember the exact way the fluorescent lights reflected off the tile floor when he said it.

That ridiculous detail has stayed with me because my brain could not process the sentence itself.

It latched onto the reflection instead.

He did not sound angry.

That would have almost made more sense.

He sounded inconvenienced.

“It’s depressing,” he added.

“I want my life back.”

Tessa gave a soft laugh and said, “Grant really tried.

But men have needs.”

I looked at both of