Chapter 4

"Shelagh, I'm home. Can you please stop being angry?"

"Look, this is that bag you always wanted. The one from that fancy French brand."

"I lost my temper the other day, sure, but you shouldn't have hit a child either."

Raymond, who could stonewall me for weeks, had actually come home with a gift to smooth things over.

And for a moment, something stirred in my hollowed-out heart.

But just as the guilt began to rise in me, my sharp eyes caught the heavy wear on the bag.

Someone had even scrawled Trudy Sullivan's name inside the lining in ballpoint pen.

It all came clear.

For the sake of the house, I'd held off for eight years, never letting myself buy that bag.

Raymond used to comfort me:

"Once we buy the school-district place and Nelly's settled in, I'll make your dream come true."

I never imagined he'd already given the bag to Trudy. And now he was handing me the leftover, secondhand thing to rub it in my face.

Seeing me freeze, Raymond pressed on:

"I know you've always been the reasonable one. As it happens, Damian's still short the enrollment fee for an international summer camp."

"Here's an idea. Send Nelly to Chicago to work as a child model for a year. What she earns should cover it."

He shoved the flyer in my face, his tone forceful:

"I already looked. Nelly meets every requirement on this flyer."

"Just one year. Not just one summer camp, not just the school-district house, even..."

"Enough!"

I cut him off, out of patience.

Raymond worked in fashion design.

He knew exactly how much a child model would suffer, and he still opened his mouth and said it, all for Damian.

More and more, I felt like the very air around him stank.

"And then what? Once we're gone, you bring Trudy and her boy in, is that it?"

"What else? They're a widow and her fatherless son. How could I not worry about them?"

I lowered my head and let out a bitter laugh.

Trudy's family needed looking after. What about me and my daughter?

I wasn't even divorced, and yet I was living exactly like a single mother.

There was a knot in my chest. I didn't answer him.

I turned and went to the bedroom to pack.

He clearly had a strong, uneasy feeling about it.

But he still forced himself to stay calm and speak:

"Shelagh, I really don't have a choice. I do love you and Nelly."

The words had barely left his mouth when Trudy's dedicated ringtone tore through the quiet.

"Raymond, the lightbulb went out at home and I'm scared of the dark. Come back quick, okay?"

Raymond didn't hesitate for a second. He turned and left.

My daughter chased after him, shouting:

"Daddy, can you not go?"

"Mommy and I are leaving soon."

What she got instead was Raymond's blame:

"I thought you two had finally come around, and here you are, still daring to lie to me."

"Trudy's a frail woman all on her own. What if something happens while she's changing a lightbulb?"

Then he left without a backward glance.

I looked up at the ceiling, at the bulb I'd changed by myself seven times.

Everything inside me went dead quiet.

I stepped forward and gently took my daughter's small hand.

"Let's go."

I set the signed divorce papers on the entryway console.

Then I walked out without looking back.