When I told my husband, Liam, I’d be using the car to visit Mom after her stroke, his response floored me: “Sure—$65 a day.” I laughed, thinking he was joking. He wasn’t. “Wear and tear,” he said. “The down payment was mine.” I stood in silence, stunned he saw me not as his wife, but as someone who owed him.

I packed my bag, called my friend Jess, and left without another word. “Respecting your property,” I told Liam from the car window. At Mom’s, I buried my pain beneath caregiving. But when she asked what was wrong, I couldn’t lie. I told her everything—how I’d become invisible in my marriage, how Liam expected me to split costs like a roommate, not a partner. She took my hand and said gently, “That’s not love. You deserve better.”

Three days later, I returned to a house in chaos. Dirty dishes, schoolbooks everywhere, a frazzled Liam and a desperate dog. “I don’t know how you do it,” he muttered. I smiled and handed him an envelope: an invoice—$28,900 for childcare, errands, and household work. “If we’re charging now, let’s be fair.” He laughed until I handed him a second envelope—divorce papers.

He begged me to reconsider. “I was stressed,” he said. But I’d already left the moment he put a price on love.

Six months later, I drove my own car to visit Mom, Emma singing in the backseat. “Do you miss Daddy?” she asked. I answered honestly, “I miss being loved the way I deserve.”

And this time, I finally was.