“Daniel, could you grab that sock for me?”

It had fallen behind the dryer, one of his gray work socks, lying in the dust just out of reach. I was thirty-six weeks pregnant. My belly was so big I couldn’t see my own feet anymore, let alone bend down far enough to reach behind a washing machine.

My husband didn’t even look up from his phone.

“You’re pregnant, Maren,” he said. “You haven’t lost your arms.”

I stood there holding the edge of the dryer, waiting for him to laugh and say he was kidding. He didn’t.

“I can’t bend that far,” I said.

“Then leave it until later.”

“Daniel, you’re standing right there.”

“And I’ve been working all day.”

“So have I.”

He rolled his eyes. “Are we seriously arguing about a sock? Just leave it.”

“Fine,” I said. “Forget it.”

I used to believe that having a big family meant never feeling alone. I grew up without parents. My mother died when I was four, and I never knew my father. I lived with my grandmother until I was nine, and when she passed, there was no will, no named guardian, nothing on paper that said where I should go. A social worker named Mrs. Ortiz picked me up from school with a garbage bag full of my clothes. Her house went to a cousin in Ohio I’d never met. I went into foster care.

I spent the rest of my childhood in other people’s homes, sleeping in other people’s spare rooms, always the girl at the edge of the family photo. So I dreamed about having my own. A husband. Babies. Sunday dinners with too many people at the table.

By thirty, I had almost all of it. A husband, Daniel. A baby girl on the way. A mother-in-law named Della who hugged me the first time we met and said, “Finally, a daughter.”

I thought I’d gotten everything I wanted.

But at thirty-six weeks pregnant, standing in our laundry room staring at a sock I couldn’t reach, I felt more alone than I’d ever felt in foster care.

My back ached all the time. My ankles swelled so badly by evening that I had to sleep with my feet propped on two pillows. And even though we both worked full-time, me as an accounts coordinator at a medical supply company and Daniel as a freelance project manager, every single household chore fell to me.

Cooking. Dishes. Laundry. Grocery shopping. Bills, actually, though Daniel liked to say he handled those. Cleaning the bathroom on my knees with my belly pressed against the tub.

I’d been going to prenatal classes alone, too. Six Tuesday evenings at the hospital. The other women sat with their husbands on yoga mats, practicing breathing together, and I sat with a pillow.

Daniel never asked what we’d learned. When I tried to tell him, he’d say, “You handle the baby stuff. I’ll handle the bills.”

Now he sighed and scrolled his phone. “Besides, I’m already having a lousy day. Michael just got another promotion.”

I tried to sound kind. “That’s great, isn’t it?”

“Sure. Great. Regional director now. Meanwhile, I’m still trying to land one decent project.”

“I’m sorry you’re having a rough day,” I said. “But I’m exhausted too.”

He tossed his phone onto the couch. “And instead of supporting me, you’re making a big deal out of a stupid sock.”

“I just asked you for a little help.”

“Well, I have bigger things to worry about.”

That’s when I started crying.

He stared at me like I’d grown a second head. “Wow. Hormones really are something.”

But it wasn’t the hormones. It was realizing I felt completely alone while standing three feet from my husband.

That night I couldn’t sleep. The baby was kicking hard against my ribs, and Daniel was snoring beside me like a man who had nothing in the world to worry about.

I got up, waddled to the kitchen, and made a cup of decaf tea. Then I did what I always do when I can’t sleep. I opened the laptop and looked at our accounts.

It’s a habit from foster care, I think. When you grow up never knowing what’s going to happen next, you learn to count things. Count your clothes. Count your money. Count the days until the next placement.

Our joint checking account at Lakeshore Credit Union had $2,140 in it. The baby fund, a savings account I’d opened the day we found out I was pregnant, had $8,400. I’d been putting $300 from every paycheck into it for seven months.

Then I opened the credit card statement.

There was a charge I didn’t recognize. $1,189 at a baby boutique downtown. I clicked on it. A stroller. A Bugaboo Fox, the exact same one Michael and Rachel had bought for their youngest.

We already had a stroller. I’d found it secondhand on a parents’ group online for $140, barely used, and Daniel had said it looked fine.

Below that was another charge. $2,050 to a furniture store. A nursery glider and matching dresser. The same brand Nathan and Claire had in their house.

I sat back in the kitchen chair, my tea going cold.

Three thousand two hundred and thirty-nine dollars. On a credit card with nineteen percent interest. Charged without a single word to me.

I wasn’t angry about the stroller, exactly. I was scared. Because I knew why he’d bought it. It wasn’t for our daughter. It was so that when his brothers came over, they’d see the same things they had.

The next morning, I put the statement on the kitchen counter next to his coffee.

He glanced at it. “What’s this?”

“You tell me.”

He picked it up. “Oh. The stroller. I was going to tell you.”

“We already have a stroller, Daniel.”

“A used one. From some stranger.” He set the paper down. “Our daughter isn’t going to be riding around in somebody else’s junk while Michael’s kids get the best of everything.”

“That ‘junk’ was in perfect condition. And we can’t afford $3,200 on a credit card right now. I’m going on maternity leave in four weeks. My short-term disability only pays sixty percent.”

“I told you, I’ll handle the bills.”

“You’re putting the bills on a credit card.”

“Because I’m going to land the Hendricks project and pay it off.” He grabbed his keys. “Why can’t you just trust me for once?”

He was gone before I could answer. The front door slammed hard enough to rattle the wedding photo on the hallway wall.

I stood in the kitchen with my hands on my belly.

“It’s okay, baby girl,” I whispered. “Mommy’s got you.”

But I didn’t feel like anybody had me.

On Saturday, his mother finally saw what I’d been dealing with.

Della arrived around eleven, just as I was trying to carry a laundry basket from the dryer to the stairs. She came in without knocking, the way she always did, carrying a tin of her lemon cookies.

“Hello, my darlings,” she sang. Then she saw me holding the basket against my belly, breathing like I’d just run a mile. “Oh, honey.”

I turned toward the living room. “Daniel, can you carry this upstairs?”

He looked over from the couch, where he’d been watching a basketball game since nine. “What exactly have you done all morning?”

I blinked. “Breakfast. Dishes. Changed the towels. Two loads of laundry.”

“Then why isn’t anything finished?”

Before I could answer, Della set down her cookies and took the basket out of my hands.

“Why are you making her prove she’s tired?” she asked her son.

Daniel laughed. “Mom, come on. You raised three kids. You never acted this helpless.”

Della’s face changed. I had never seen it look like that. Hard, and very old, and very tired all at once.

“You remember being taken care of,” she said quietly. “You don’t remember what it cost me.”

“Come on,” Daniel said, turning back to the game. “Pregnancy isn’t a disability.”

Della looked at him for a long moment. Then she put down the laundry basket, picked up her purse, and walked out the front door without a word.

Daniel shrugged. “She’ll be back. She always gets dramatic.”

I picked up the basket myself and started up the stairs, one step at a time, gripping the railing.

Fifteen minutes later, the front door opened again.

Della walked in carrying a huge watermelon in her arms and two cantaloupes in a grocery bag hanging from her wrist. A roll of medical tape and a long elastic back brace stuck out of her purse.

Daniel blinked. “Are we having a barbecue?”

“No,” Della said. “You’re having a baby.”

“What?”

She held up the watermelon. It had to weigh at least twenty-five pounds. “You think carrying extra weight is easy? Let’s find out.”

Daniel laughed, sure she was joking. She wasn’t. She made him stand up, wrapped the back brace around his middle, and strapped that watermelon to his stomach with the elastic and half a roll of tape. Then she put the two cantaloupes in a canvas bag, slung it across his chest, and taped that down too.

Daniel looked down at himself. Then he looked at me and struck a pose, one hand on his hip, belly pushed forward.

“Still think you’re special?” he asked me, grinning.

Della handed him the laundry basket. “Upstairs.”