At Our Wedding, Husband's Ex Threatened Suicide; I Left

The wedding was half over, and Chad Gilbert and I were just about to exchange rings.

That's when his ex-girlfriend, the one who claimed she had severe depression, suddenly called him on video.

Chad, I'm having an episode. I can't feel anything, no matter what I do.

Slap your wife right now to cheer me up, or I'll jump off this building!

Chad frowned. "What are you talking about."

Then he hung up.

I thought it was just some absurd prank, and I was still holding out my hand, waiting for him to slide the ring on.

He cupped my finger, raised his other hand, and slapped me hard across the face.

My head snapped to the side. The little diamonds on the ring tore my skin, and blood welled up in an instant.

The guests around us all froze. The only one clapping was Sapphire Matthews, still on the video call.

Tears stinging my eyes, I pressed a hand to my face and lifted my head. "She's happy now. Can you take me to the hospital? I'm scared it'll leave a scar."

He went rigid for a second, his hand reaching toward my face, then flinching back. Then he scrambled to help me up.

"Come on. We're going to the hospital right now."

I lowered my head, but a cold smile tugged at my lips.

We were a legally married couple.

Inside a marriage, public domestic violence plus a documented injury report from the hospital was the best recipe for sending him out with nothing.

...

I glanced over the strange expressions on the guests below, then dropped my eyes, my voice pressed low and soft.

"Honey, you won't hit me like that again, will you? I'm so scared."

Only then did Chad fully come back to himself. "Deidre Pruitt, blame me. It's all my fault."

I pressed my lips together and said nothing, tears swimming in my eyes.

Seeing me stay silent, he added guiltily, "Sapphire really was going to jump. I couldn't just watch her die, could I? That's a human life."

The corners of my mouth pulled down. I drew my hand back. "I don't blame you."

The emergency room reeked of disinfectant.

The nurse held a cotton ball in a pair of tweezers and pressed it against my cheekbone. I gripped the armrest and sucked in a breath at the pain.

Chad hovered behind me, all attentiveness. "What do you want to eat? I'll have someone bring it."

For a moment my mind went blank.

Three years, and he was rarely this eager?

Back when I used to get stomach cramps in the middle of the night, crying so hard I couldn't stop, all he'd say was "drink more hot water," then roll over and go back to sleep.

If he'd been like this from the start, I probably would have been out of my mind with joy.

But now, watching him tiptoe around me like this, I just felt hollow.

I pulled the thin hospital blanket over half my face and muttered, "Not hungry."

Left hanging for a while, Chad finally couldn't keep his expression in check.

He stood up, his voice hardening. "How many times do I have to say it? I was saving a life. Is that really worth turning on me?"

I didn't answer. I closed my eyes and turned onto my side.

He didn't say anything more. His footsteps faded, and when they came back, he set down a stack of plastic containers on the chair next to me.

The moment I lifted a lid, the smell of chili oil hit me so hard my nose stung.

Spicy poached beef, a fiery spicy stew... every one of them the kind of thing that would inflame my wound, and every one of them Sapphire's old favorites.

I stared at those containers for a long moment before I looked up at him.

"Chad, I have a stomach condition. I never eat anything spicy."

He froze, glanced down at the bags, his lips moving, but he stood there with nothing to say.

I sat up and pushed the blanket aside, looking up at him. "In a few days, when you have time, let's get the divorce done."

Chad grabbed my hand, gripping it so hard it felt like he wanted to crush the life out of me.

"Deidre, you can't do this. Just this one thing, this one! You have to use divorce to force my hand, is that it?"

"We just got married, a room full of guests watching, and you bring this up now?"

My wrist throbbed. I tried to pull free and couldn't.

"Deidre?"

A voice drifted in from the doorway.

Chad's hand let go at once, without a moment's hesitation.

Sapphire stood in the doorway in a loose hospital gown, face pale, hair hanging loose, looking every bit the patient.

She took two steps inside, glanced at me, then at Chad, and pressed her lips together. "I, I came to pick up my medication. I didn't expect to run into you two."

"Deidre, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to ruin your wedding, I just couldn't control myself."

Before she finished, Chad cut in.

"Sapphire, don't say any more."

He turned to me, his tone as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "You can see she's sick. She can't help it. Don't hold it against her."

I opened my mouth and nothing came out.

He added, "Just take a cab home yourself. I looked at the cut, it's not that big. It's nothing serious."

"I'll stay with Sapphire until she gets her medication, then I'll be home later."

I stared at him for two seconds, my mouth twisting, and let out a bitter laugh.

"Fine."

I picked up my bag, stood, and walked out. When I passed Sapphire, she shifted to one side, timidly stepping aside to make room for me.

I walked out of the room and hailed a cab at the curb.

Once I got home, I dug out the injury report and medical records the hospital had issued, photographed them, and dialed the number in my phone I hadn't called in three years.

"Mom."

"What is it?"

My mother's voice was as calm as if she were taking a work call.

"Mom, I want to file for divorce."

The line went quiet for two or three seconds.

"Send me a copy of any evidence in your favor. I'll handle the rest."

While she spoke, I heard a keyboard clacking, as if she were answering emails on other cases even as she talked to me.

"Got it," I said.

"Mm." She hung up.

I sat in the dark, gripping the phone, staring at nothing.

My mother was the most expensive divorce lawyer in the city, with a win rate that was frankly terrifying.

As a child I never understood why she spent every day breaking apart other people's marriages, and I'd blamed her too for not being able to hold on to my father, for leaving our family in pieces.

So for years I did the opposite of everything she wanted. I didn't listen to her about who I dated. I didn't even tell her I was getting married.

I thought I didn't need her.

When I pushed open the door to my mother's law office, she was behind her desk, going through a case file.

She looked up, and her eyes landed on the gauze over my cheekbone. They stayed there for a couple of seconds.

"He hit you?"

"Yeah."

She seemed to want to say something, but after all these years apart we'd grown stiff with each other, and she looked a little at a loss.

The silence stretched a few minutes before she spoke.

"Your father took up with another woman the second year we were married."

"I was seven months pregnant. One night I got a call. That woman, her belly bigger than mine, telling me to step aside."

She said it calmly, the way she'd recite the facts of someone else's case.

"I went to him. He told me I was too domineering, that he couldn't breathe living with me. That she was gentler. That she needed him."

She let out a soft breath. "I had the baby. The moment I was out of confinement, I filed the papers. He knelt in front of me and cried. Said he'd change. Said he'd be good to me and the baby for the rest of his life."

She paused and glanced at me.

"I believed him. And he fooled me twice more with the exact same words. The third time I didn't say anything. I just went straight to court and got the divorce."

"So listen to me, Deidre. There's no shame in falling for a man's sweet talk for a while."

"What's frightening is when you can't get out. You need to learn to treat your emotions as a tool, not let them lead you around."

She let go of whatever she'd been holding onto, stepped back, sat down behind her desk, opened the file, as if none of what she'd just said had come from her.

"Send the evidence to my email. I'll handle the rest."

I sat in that office the whole afternoon. My mother took two calls and met with a couple who'd come in for a consultation.

The wife was crying too hard to speak. My mother handed her tissues, waited until she was done, then laid out the pros and cons plainly, one by one.

Not one word of extra comfort the entire time, and yet when the woman left she held my mother's hand, unable to put her gratitude into words.

I was starting to understand why so many people came to her.

When we wrapped up that evening, she slid a key across to me.

"That apartment on the west side of town is empty. Stay there for now. It's far from him. He won't find you."

I nodded and closed my hand around the key. She wasn't looking at me when she said it, head down as she packed away a file, but I knew it wasn't that she didn't care.

She just wasn't the type for the whole mother-and-daughter crying-in-each-other's-arms scene.

For the next few days I didn't go back. I spent my days sitting in her office, helping her sort materials for old cases.

When her assistant had too much on her plate, I pitched in, poured tea and water, did the printing and copying, took a call for her now and then.

Everyone here called her Ms. Henson, with a respect in their voices I'd never seen when I was a child.

She'd sit dead center in the conference room, and no matter how tough the person across from her was, in the end they'd bow their head and sign the settlement.

At night I sat in the apartment she'd set up for me. The cut on my face had scabbed over. It didn't hurt much anymore.

I heated myself a cup of milk and opened my phone to the messages my mother had sent, a few voice notes, all details about handling the evidence.

The last one was two seconds long. I tapped it. She said, "There's braised pork ribs in the fridge. Make some for yourself."

I sat there holding the phone for a while, and slowly let myself relax.

I'd meant to talk to Chad about the divorce, but he wouldn't pick up.

I called five or six times, and every one went dead. I sent three texts, all read, none answered.

I dug out the key to the marital house, figuring I'd just slide the divorce agreement through the gap in the door.

The door opened onto a lit living room, a takeout box on the coffee table, chopsticks laid across the rim, a half-finished glass of red wine beside it.

I took two steps in and was about to call out when Sapphire poked her head out of the bedroom doorway.

She had on my loungewear, her hair loosely pinned up, her face pink and fresh, her lips flushed, nothing like the pale, sickly woman from the hospital that day.

She held a slice of watermelon, and when she saw me she didn't flinch. She smiled instead.

"Oh, hi, big sister Deidre. Here to collect your things?"

I ignored her and glanced into the bedroom.

She leaned against the doorframe. "Don't bother looking. Chad's not here. He went out to dinner with friends. Said he won't be back tonight, told me to stay here for now."

She tilted her head at me. "Your face healed up fast, huh. I thought it'd leave a scar."

"That would've been perfect. Standing next to my Chad, you'd carry that mark forever. Suits you."

I set my bag on the entryway cabinet and bent to change my shoes.

"This is my home. Get out."

"Your home?" She laughed out loud and dropped the watermelon rind on the floor by her feet.

"Sure, your name's on the marriage certificate with Chad's, fine. But put your hand on your heart and ask yourself. Is there one single thing he didn't put me first for?"

"He picked this house. He oversaw the renovation. Even that slap on your face, he asked me about it first."

I crouched down, picked up the rind she'd thrown, and dropped it in the trash.

That only egged her on. Her voice climbed higher.

"Deidre, you really think you can keep him? When I met him, you weren't even in line yet."

"He feels for me. He tells me everything. He said you're a dull person, every little calculation of yours written right on your face, that marrying you was just settling."

"He said before the wedding you clung to him every single day, annoyed him to death."

"Said aside from your looks being passable, there's nothing about you he thinks twice about. Said you can't even cry right. You can't even fake it convincingly."

Her voice was sweet and soft, like she was chatting about something worth being happy over. "Big sister, if I were you, I'd be too embarrassed to come knock on this door."

I stood up and pressed the lid back down on the trash.

"Are these your things?"

I pointed at the pile of clothes on the couch.

"Chad bought them for me." She lifted her chin. "What, jealous?"

I didn't answer. I rolled up her pile of clothes and set it on the mat outside the door.

She started up again, sharper this time.

"You went to all that trouble to get married, and for what? For his money? For that face of his? Isn't your mom a divorce lawyer? Didn't you pick up a trick or two on how to keep a man tied down?"