“I want a divorce, Mariana. And I’m keeping the kids. You have no way to provide for them.”

Julian placed the  divorce papers on the kitchen table as though he were announcing something as ordinary as switching internet providers.

I was standing in the kitchen of our Chicago apartment, still wearing my apron, my hair pulled back in a messy knot.

In the living room, our four-year-old twins, Mateo and Sophia, were happily building a colorful block tower.

For six years, I had done everything I could to hold our  family together.

Julian worked as a sales director at a medical supply company, earning around eighty thousand dollars a year.

Ever since his latest promotion, he had begun behaving as though everyone around him was somehow beneath him—especially me.

“Look at you,” he said, studying me with