Julian arrived at the courthouse expecting a surrender.

He wore the navy suit I had bought him for our fifth anniversary — I noticed that, and felt nothing but a distant, clinical interest that I could feel nothing — and he walked in flanked by his mother and by Selina, smiling broadly, a man arriving to collect a thing he considered already his.

And then he saw me, and he stopped, because there was one detail about my situation that Julian’s forged records and canceled cards had not accounted for, and it was impossible to miss.

I was twenty-six weeks pregnant with twins.

The blood drained out of his face so fast I saw it happen.

“No,” he said, not to me, to the air, to the universe.