The thing about what Mason said is that there is no way to unsay it. There is no "I was stressed." There is no "I didn't mean it." There is no "you misheard me" — although he tried all three in the weeks and months that followed, when he finally realized what he had done. But I was lying on a hospital bed in the most open, exposed moment of my entire life, delivering his child, and he said — out loud, into my ear — that he didn't want us. Not the baby. Not the marriage. Not the life. He was there because my mother would kill him. That was the reason. And once a sentence like that leaves a man's mouth, he cannot take it back, no matter how many flowers he sends. No matter how many apologies he writes. No matter how many nights he sleeps on the couch. I did not leave him that night. That's the thing I'm most ashamed of. I stayed for five more years.