And then there were the fishing trips. Every Saturday since Brent was twelve years old, he and Gerald went fishing together. Every single Saturday. They’d never missed one—not for holidays, not for emergencies, not even for our wedding. We had to move the ceremony to Sunday because Gerald had already reserved their spot at Lake Raystown. I thought it was sweet at first, this father-son tradition. I told myself it was a sign of family values.

What I didn’t realize was that I would never come before those fishing trips. Not once. Not even when I was literally bringing their family’s next generation into the world.

The signs were there before that March morning—they always are. A few months before my due date, I started noticing money missing from our joint checking account. Small amounts at first: $150 here, $200 there. When I asked Brent about it, he waved me off. Business expenses, he said. You wouldn’t understand the supply chain business.

I work as a medical billing specialist at Keystone Orthopedic Associates. I understand numbers just fine, but I let it go because I was tired and pregnant and wanted to believe my husband wasn’t lying to my face.

My mother, Colleen, had warned me about this marriage. Three years ago, right before the wedding, she sat me down at her kitchen table in Scranton and said she had concerns. She said Brent seemed like a nice man, but a nice man who couldn’t stand up to his father wasn’t really a man at all. I told her she was being unfair. I told her she didn’t know him like I did. I told her love would be enough.

Mothers are annoying like that—always being right about things you don’t want to hear.So there I was that Saturday morning in March, nine months pregnant with contractions getting stronger, sitting in the passenger seat of our car because Brent was supposed to drive me to the hospital. Instead, he stood in our driveway with his fishing rod in one hand and his tackle box in the other, telling me his father was already at the lake and couldn’t wait. He said women had been giving birth for thousands of years. He said I was strong. He said twelve minutes wasn’t that far. Then he kissed my forehead and got in his father’s truck.