Chapter 5 - The First Breath of Freedom
I sat in my car,
my hands gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white.
I didn't start the engine immediately.
I just sat there,
watching the front door of the house we had bought together,
the house that was supposed to be filled with the sounds of children and laughter.
Instead,
it was a mausoleum of broken promises.
I saw the curtain in the living room twitch.
One of them was watching me.
I didn't care which one.
I turned the key,
and the engine roared to life,
a mechanical growl that felt like a release.
As I backed out of the driveway,
I saw Chloe standing on the porch.
She looked small now,
without the walls of my kitchen to protect her.
She looked like what she was—a girl who had played a high-stakes game and realized she didn't know the rules.
I drove away,
not looking back in the rearview mirror.
The city was waking up,
the sun bleeding gold over the horizon,
lighting up the skyscrapers of Chicago in the distance.
For three years,
I had looked at that skyline and felt a pang of longing.
Now,
I looked at it and felt nothing but a desire to see it crumble.
I pulled into a small diner a few miles away,
a place Ethan would never step foot in.
It was greasy,
loud,
and honest.
I sat in a corner booth and ordered a black coffee.
My phone buzzed on the table.
A text from Ethan:
Please come back. We can fix this. I love you, Mabel.
I stared at the words until they blurred.
"I love you."
How easy those words were for him to type.
How meaningless they were after a thousand nights of absence.
I blocked his number.
Then,
I dialed a different one.
"Arthur?"
I said when the call connected.
"It’s Mabel.
It’s time.
Release the first set of documents to the internal audit committee at Vance Global."
There was a pause on the other end.
"Are you sure,
Mabel?
Once this starts,
there’s no going back.
It will ruin him."
I looked at my reflection in the window of the diner.
I didn't see the woman who had cried herself to sleep.
I saw the woman who was finally waking up.
"He ruined himself,
Arthur.
I’m just the one turning on the lights so everyone can see the mess."
I hung up the phone and took a sip of the bitter,
hot coffee.
It tasted better than any meal I had eaten in years.
The first chapter of my life as a widow of a living marriage had begun.
And I was going to make sure the ending was exactly what he deserved.
I pulled out a notepad from my purse and began to write.
Not a love letter.
Not a plea for explanation.
May you like
I began to write the list of everything I was going to take back.
Starting with my dignity.
