At 9:05 AM, I went upstairs to get my suitcase. Colin followed me into the hallway. When he saw it already packed, he realized this wasn’t an impulsive threat.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To my house. I bought a little yellow craftsman home near your Aunt Helen—it has a porch and a kitchen that gets the morning sun.”
“Since when?”
“Since June.”
He stared at me as if discovering I had lived a secret double life under his roof. In reality, I had simply reclaimed a life I had stopped sharing with him because he had stopped asking.
Before I walked out the door, Jessica appeared with glossy eyes and her arms crossed. “This is going to destroy our family.”
“No,” I told her. “What destroys a family is treating someone like a domestic service when it’s convenient and an obstacle when they no longer fit your plans. I’m not keeping your children from you, nor am I leaving you homeless today. I am simply handing the responsibility of your own household back to you, just as you wanted to hand the responsibility of mine back to me.”
