My baby shower was almost over when my mother-in-law walked straight to the gift table and swept every cash envelope into her handbag.

Holly immediately reached for her phone on the kitchen counter. "I’m calling the police."

"Wait," I said, holding up a hand.

The pounding stopped, replaced by the desperate rattle of the door handle. Through the frosted glass of the front door, I could see Adam’s dark silhouette, hunched against the November drizzle.

"Natalie, please!" he yelled, his voice cracking with hysteria. "Just five minutes! Let me talk to you! Mom, I know your car is out here! Stop turning my wife against me!"

Diane stood up from the table, smoothing down the front of her wool sweater. "Do not open that door, Natalie."

"I’m not opening it," I replied, standing up to join her. My heart was pounding, but the suffocating terror that had paralyzed me at the shower had burned away, leaving behind something hard and unyielding.

I walked to the front window, pulled the wooden blind back two inches, and looked through the glass.

Adam looked unhinged. His hair was greasy, plastered to his forehead by the rain. He wore the same rumpled button-down shirt from yesterday, but his jacket was missing. In his arms, he clutched a garish, cellophane-wrapped bouquet of grocery-store carnations and a pink plush rabbit with a satin ribbon around its neck.

He was love-bombing. The classic, pathetic cycle. Break everything, burn the house down, then show up with cheap flowers and tears, expecting the women in his life to sweep up the ashes and forgive him.

He saw the slat open. He dropped to his knees right on Holly’s wet concrete porch, holding the stuffed animal up toward the window like an offering.

"Nat, look," he cried, his face twisted in agony. "I bought this for June. At the Kroger on Main. I spent my last twenty dollars on it, Nat. I haven't eaten all day. I slept in the truck at the rest stop. Please... I called a rehab center in Marysville. They have an outpatient gambling program. I’ll go every single night! I’ll do whatever you want!"

I stared at him through the glass. Seven years of memories flashed through my mind: our wedding on the beach in North Carolina, the way he held my hand when my father died, the Sunday mornings we spent painting the nursery walls. I had loved this man with every fiber of my being.

But the man kneeling on that porch wasn't the man I had married.

The man kneeling on that porch was a stranger who had risked his daughter's life, stolen from an elderly uncle, and left his pregnant wife uninsured to feed a sickness he refused to face until he got caught.

I unlocked the window latch, pushed the lower sash up three inches, and spoke through the screen.

"Take the rabbit and leave, Adam."

"Natalie, no! Listen to me—"

"If you don't step off this porch in thirty seconds, Holly is pressing the call button for the Franklin County Sheriff. And when they get here, I am handing them Greg Callahan's sworn statement regarding the twelve thousand dollars in stolen HVAC equipment from Apex."

Adam froze. The carnations slipped from his fingers, falling into the puddle of muddy rainwater beside the welcome mat. His face turned an ugly, mottled red.

"You went to Greg?" he whispered.

"I went to Greg. I know about the copper. I know about the refrigerant. And I know you let my health insurance lapse six weeks ago."

"Nat, I was going to fix—"

"You are not fixing anything," I said, my voice steady, cold, and absolute. "You are going to your truck. You are going to sign the quitclaim deed that Diane’s attorney delivers to you tomorrow. And if you ever come near this house, my school, or our daughter without a court order, I will make sure you spend the next five years of your life in a state penitentiary."

"You're a monster," he spat, his desperation curdling instantly into venom. He stood up, kicking the fallen bouquet off the porch into the bushes. "I built that life for you! You think you can afford that house on your school secretary salary? You'll be evicted by Christmas! You'll be crawling back to me on your hands and knees!"

"I would rather raise June in a cardboard box than let her spend one single day thinking a man like you is what love looks like," I said.

I pulled the window shut, locked the brass latch, and closed the blinds.

Outside, after a moment of heavy, violent silence, we heard his boots stomp down the steps, followed by the roar of his truck engine as he peeled away from the curb, tires screeching against the wet pavement.

I turned around to face the living room.

Holly, Aunt Carol, and Diane were all watching me.

Suddenly, a sharp, blinding pain tore through my lower abdomen, radiating down into my thighs with the force of an electric shock.

I gasped, doubling over, my hands flying to the bottom of my belly.

"Natalie?" Holly rushed forward.

A warm, heavy gush of liquid soaked through my maternity leggings, splashing onto the hardwood floor beneath my feet.

My water had broken.