My ex-husband, Spencer Langford, had never worried about money.
His family owned luxury hotels, commercial real estate, and investment firms across Virginia, under a name that was on the side of buildings I drove past every morning on the way to work.
When we divorced five years earlier, Spencer kept the mansion in Great Falls, the cars, and nearly all the wealth he had controlled throughout our marriage.
I did not fight for it.
I was thirty-four and tired and I had a three-year-old who needed a bedroom more than I needed a lawyer, and his attorneys knew it.
I rented a modest townhouse outside Fairfax, two bedrooms and a patch of grass, and worked as an administrative coordinator for a dental practice.
Our son, Eli, lived with me most of the time.
I packed his lunches, went to every school event, sat with him over homework at the kitchen table, and stayed up through every fever with a cold washcloth and a hand on his back.
