Thirty-two hundred for the girlfriend’s apartment, and a six-figure necklace on top, drawn from a well he told me was nearly dry.

That was not passion overriding his judgment.

That was his judgment, expressed in the coldest, most honest language there is, which is money.

He had looked at the woman who bore his child and ran his home on coupons, and at the woman who sat on his lap, and he had priced us, and I had come in at a little more than half.

For three years I had carried a low, steady guilt about being a financial burden to my husband.