Chapter 3

The sight of him, so casually trying to take the last piece of my grandmother's protection, snapped something inside me. The fog of grief and pain receded, replaced by a cold, hard clarity.

"I want a divorce, Ethan," I said, my voice quiet but firm. I put the knife down on the cutting board.

He and Tiffany both looked at me, surprised. Then Ethan laughed. It wasn't a nice sound. It was condescending, dismissive.

"A divorce? Don't be so dramatic, Ava," he said, waving his hand as if swatting away a fly. "You have nowhere to go. You have nothing. I'm a successful doctor now. What are you?"

He stood up and walked over to me, lowering his voice. "Listen. I'll be blunt. I like Tiffany. She's young, she's fun, she admires me. But you're my wife. You're the respectable, stable architect's wife that looks good on my arm at hospital fundraisers. We can have an arrangement. You get the house, the credit cards. I get... a little freedom. It's what modern couples do."

I stared at him, disgusted. "You think I would ever agree to that?"

He shrugged, a smirk playing on his lips. "What choice do you have? Besides," he added, looking me up and down with a contemptuous gaze, "I know you. You're loyal. You wouldn't dream of being with another man. You just don't have it in you."

His arrogance was a spark in the tinder of my anger. He thought he had me completely broken, completely under his control.

That night, after he and Tiffany had left for a "late-night movie," I built a fire in the fireplace. I went into our bedroom and pulled out a photo album from the back of the closet. It was filled with pictures from the six years I supported him. Me, smiling, handing him a coffee as he studied. Us, celebrating his med school graduation, my arm proudly around him.

I took the pages out one by one. This picture, from when he got his residency acceptance letter. I remembered crying with joy. That was the week he forgot my birthday. This one, from our third anniversary. He'd promised me a trip to Paris, but then said he needed the money for a new set of expensive textbooks.

Each smile in the photos was a testament to my own foolishness. I threw them into the fire, watching the happy images of us curl, blacken, and turn to ash. The faces of the people we used to be, consumed by the flames of who we had become.

When Ethan came home, smelling of Tiffany's perfume and cheap movie theater popcorn, he wrinkled his nose. "What's that smell?"

"I was just burning some old financial papers," I said, my face a placid mask. "Getting rid of clutter."

He accepted the lie without a second thought. He was too self-absorbed to notice the truth.

The next week, at my follow-up appointment, my regular doctor was out sick. A young, kind-faced nurse with a name tag that read 'Sarah' was taking my vitals. There was a sympathy in her eyes that felt genuine.

"How are you really doing, Mrs. Hayes?" she asked softly, when we were alone.

I took a risk. "I need help," I whispered, my voice breaking. "I need to make a phone call, but my husband monitors my phone."

Sarah looked at the door, then back at me. She nodded. "Give me the number. I'll make the call for you."

I felt a sliver of hope. It was a small, fragile thing, but it was there.

The brazenness of their affair only grew. Ethan stopped trying to hide it. Tiffany started leaving her things around the house-a pink toothbrush in our bathroom, a romance novel on my nightstand. One evening, Ethan came home from the clinic with a faint, reddish mark on his neck, just above his collar. He didn't even bother to come up with an excuse. He knew I wouldn't dare to challenge him. The power in our house had shifted completely.