Chapter 5
By the time I retrieved my boarding pass, the proceeds from the sale of the house had already landed in my account.
That small suburban house–the one I had once thought of as my dowry–was no longer a symbol of sacrifice. Selling it didn’t feel like I was giving anything away; it felt like I was taking back what had always been mine.
As for Ryan and Lucas coming home to find themselves locked out of the house? Well, that was no longer my problem.
Before I left for the airport, I made one more stop. I went to a boutique and bought myself a real outfit–something that fit me for once. No more oversized clothes that swallowed me, no more faded sweats that I’d been hiding behind for
years.
There were still many changes left to make, but once I walked away from that house, something inside me shifted. It felt like I could finally take a breath again.
For the first time in as long as I could remember, I woke up without the oppressive weight of chores hovering over me.
I chose a quiet city. Small, intimate, just the right size for me to feel like I belonged.
The money from the sale was more than enough to buy a modest, comfortable home, and with what was left, I would be able to live the rest of my life in peace.
In my forty years of marriage to Ryan, I had thought about divorce countless times.
—
1/6
Every time I scrubbed dishes. Every time I folded laundry. Every time I sat at the dinner table, ignored and invisible. Every time I lay next to a man who hadn’t touched me in
years.
I had dreamed of a life of my own, a space where I could finally breathe without being trapped under the weight of everyone else’s needs.
I wanted to wake up when I chose, not to the sound of someone barking orders at me for breakfast.
I wanted the freedom to rest when I was exhausted, to eat when I was hungry, to be seen as a person, not a servant, not a mother, not a body to endure pain after pain.
But each time I came close to leaving, fear gripped me.
I hadn’t worked in decades. How would I survive?
What would happen to our son?
First, it was grade school. Then middle school. Then high school. Then college.
And so, I stayed.
I waited.
And waited.
For forty long years.
Until now.
The moment I stepped away for good, I understood something.
Living for yourself isn’t as complicated as people make it sound.
2/6
Leaving isn’t the real challenge. The real challenge was the years of excuses, of rationalizing, of living under a weight J created myself.
For forty years, I buried my fear beneath guilt and obligation.
And now, after all that time, I had finally allowed myself to breathe.
The real change came when I went house–hunting.
My agent, a young woman in her twenties, didn’t look at me with pity or judgment. To her, I was just another client.
While we signed the papers, I didn’t know why, but I asked, “Do you get a lot of clients like me?”
I didn’t elaborate.
But she didn’t even flinch. She kept typing and, with a nonchalant shrug, said, “All the time. Every day. People take that step. All kinds of people.”
Her words sank deep, like the warm embrace of sunlight on my skin.
Of course.
The world is vast.
There are millions of women like me.
I wasn’t the first to feel trapped.
And I certainly wouldn’t be the last.
Maybe it felt late to others.
3/6
But to me, the time I had left was still my own.
And just like that, I settled into my new life.
A life where I was finally just me.
The wedding was extravagant–luxurious, buzzing with life.
Ryan spent over two hundred thousand dollars, all to give Madeline’s son the wedding of his dreams. And, of course, to atone for his own guilt.
Lucas may have been Madeline’s biological son, but he had never once called her “Mom.”
And that guilt, it weighed on Ryan. It weighed on Lucas too.
As for me? To Ryan, I was the woman who “let herself go.”
He still remembered the woman I once was-
-the one he married, beautiful, poised, elegant.
But over the years, he claimed I had “let myself go.”
After I had the miscarriage, I gained weight.
And when our baby was born with a congenital heart defect, I cracked.
Our firstborn only lived a few short years.
I gave everything everything I had to try and save him.
I didn’t sleep. I barely ate. I stopped caring about how I looked. I became nothing but a mother desperate to cling to hope.
Ryan said I stopped looking human. He called me a “cow” lying in his bed.
4/6
Even when I lost the weight, even after the grief consumed me, it didn’t matter.
In his eyes, I had already broken something that could never be fixed.
He told himself maybe all married women eventually became like that.
So he endured it.
He settled.
Until Madeline returned.
The moment Ryan saw her again, a spark ignited inside him.
But he stayed faithful–at first. After all, Madeline was my best friend, and I was still his wife, despite how far I had fallen in his eyes.
But Ryan knew. He knew how Madeline felt for him. He saw it in the way she looked at him, the way her eyes lingered when she thought I wasn’t paying attention.
But still, I had just lost a child. Neither of them dared to cross that line.
At first, they kept their distance. But fate, it seemed, had its own plans.
They ran into each other at a concert. They found out they shared obscure tastes in coffee, in books.
Ryan had never shared those things with me. Not since the first year of our marriage.
Over time, he convinced himself that Madeline was his soulmate.
5/6
In his mind, no vows were broken.
Madeline didn’t want marriage. Ryan didn’t want to be “reckless.”
So they started seeing each other in secret–nothing too obvious. Just enough to feel special, to make themselves believe in something they were too scared to admit.
During those years after our son’s death, I was drowning in grief.
And Ryan?
He’d long since closed that chapter.
Then one day, I came home and said, “Let’s have another baby.”
6/6
