I stayed because I told myself Emory needed both parents. I stayed because Mason's family was kind to me, and his mother Evelyn was the grandmother I wish I'd had myself. I stayed because I was twenty-nine years old, and exhausted, and I had a newborn and a house and a job and I did not have the energy for a divorce on top of everything else. I stayed because the sentence had been so quiet, and maybe — maybe — I had misheard him, even though I hadn't. I stayed, mostly, because I was scared. Of being alone. Of raising a daughter alone. Of telling people. Of admitting that the man I'd married — the charming, funny, handsome man my sisters had all been jealous of — had said those words to me in a delivery room at 3 AM. So I stayed. I pretended. I built a marriage on top of a sentence. The marriage ended eight months ago. The sentence never did.