He had developed a schedule for my humiliation.
Sometimes he sent messages reminding me not to use the apartment bathroom during the night because the sound of the plumbing disturbed him.
I would use the restroom in the lobby before leaving.
If I needed to use it after I was already in the car, I had to walk around the building to a twenty-four-hour gas station two streets away.
I was thirty-four weeks pregnant.
I was walking two streets in the middle of the night to use a public restroom because my husband wanted uninterrupted sleep.
And every morning, I went upstairs and acted as though our marriage could still be repaired.
I told myself that the baby would change things.
Once he held our daughter, perhaps the tenderness would return.
Perhaps the exhaustion would lift.
Perhaps he would look at me and remember that I was the woman he had promised to love.
