He let out a hard laugh. “No, what you love is my bank account. Let’s not dress this up.”
“Listen carefully,” Richard said, each word clipped and controlled. “I don’t need grandchildren from some nobody who thinks getting pregnant is a business strategy. Family matters. Background matters. Standards matter.”
“I’m not going to let my family line be dragged down by a girl who smells like a barn and thinks that makes her wholesome.”
Mike stood there in silence.
Kate waited for him to say something—anything—to stand up for her, for their children, for the life they had talked about building. But he only lowered his eyes.
She looked at him one last time, desperate for some sign of courage.
Come on, Mike, say something. Tell him we’ll figure it out.
At last he looked up, but there was nothing in his face except fear and weakness.
He let go of her hand.
“I’m sorry, Kate,” he muttered, turning toward the window. “My father’s right.”
“We can’t afford three kids. How are we even supposed to live?”
That was the sentence that broke whatever was left.
Kate didn’t cry. She turned, walked out on unsteady legs, and left that cold house for good. Behind her came Richard’s voice, loud and satisfied.
“Go ahead. We’ll see how this works out when those kids are hungry and you’ve got nothing.”
She stepped through the tall iron gate with two hundred dollars in her pocket and a bus ticket back to the small Appalachian town where she’d grown up.
She didn’t know it yet, but the worst day of her life was also the beginning of her strength.
The ride home felt endless. The old bus hit every pothole in the road, jarring her body and her thoughts. She leaned her forehead against the cool window while Mike’s words kept repeating in her mind: We can’t afford three kids.
Not we, she thought bitterly. You.
He had said it as if they were talking about an expense, not three living children.
Her hometown greeted her with the smell of damp earth, late summer flowers, and river fog settling low over the road. She walked slowly down the street she had known since childhood, feeling as if every darkened porch was watching.
Tomorrow, she thought, the neighbors would talk. They’d say she went off chasing a better life and came back pregnant, alone, and ashamed.
