JESSALYN
Could he hear my heart hammering? It sounded like a sledgehammer pounding against my ribcage as I crept down the stairs, one careful step at a time, avoiding the squeaky fifth tread.
I’d mixed a dozen Benadryl tablets into his second glass of wine, but would it be enough?
My husband had always been a painfully light sleeper.
When I tripped over his briefcase in the hallway, I almost chickened out.
Almost crept back to bed and pretended I’d just gone to the kitchen for a glass of milk.
But the bruise around my left eye throbbed, and I knew that if I stayed, I’d regret it later.
This wasn’t the first time he’d marked my face, and unless I escaped, it wouldn’t be the last.
I should have cut and run before.
I knew I should, but it hadn’t always been like this.
Sunglasses used to be a casual accessory, not a shield from awkward questions.
In the beginning, Ridge had acted sweet and charming, the lawyer who’d had my back as I fought for compensation from the careless jerk who’d killed my mom and injured me.
And Ridge had won. Won the case and won me over.
We’d gotten married three months after the cheque was cashed, and now when I looked back, I realised that was the point he’d begun to change.
It was hard to pinpoint the exact moment my life turned to shit.
When “I’ll treat you to a new outfit” left him dictating how I dressed, when “I’ve booked a table at L’Eiffel, just the two of us” left me cut off from my friends, when “finances are hard, let me give you a hand with budgeting” left me with no access to my own money.
My failure to get pregnant had been hard on both of us, I understood that, but comfort had turned to overbearing pressure as he tracked my cycles, put sex on a schedule, and gripped my hand at doctor’s appointments.
For the past six years—dating for one year and married for five—I’d been stuck like a frog in a pan of slowly boiling water.
Only two things had kept me sane—Saylor, the sole friend who refused to take “no” for an answer, and Shiro, the puppy I’d found shivering on the porch almost three years ago.
Yesterday afternoon, Ridge had taken Shiro to the shelter.
And yesterday evening, I’d finally snapped.
But quietly, because I didn’t want more bruises, and I needed him to drink that damn wine.
Carefully, I lifted my mom’s casserole dish out of the cabinet.
Maybe I was dumb for wanting to take it with me, but it was the only thing I had left of her.
I wrapped it in three dish towels and slid it into my backpack.
The bag didn’t contain much, just the clothes and toiletries I’d hurriedly stuffed inside, plus the small amount of cash I’d hidden in an empty bottle of laundry detergent, a place he’d never look.
Each bill had been carefully liberated over time from his wallet, ten bucks here and twenty there, but nearly five hundred dollars in total.
I heard a creak and froze. Had he woken up?
Was he coming to find me? I held my breath, listening, but no lights came on.
Perhaps it was just the house settling? We lived in a restored Victorian, a beautiful prison.
The car key was kept in a lockbox, but Ridge wasn’t always too careful when he opened it, so I knew the code.
One-four-two-seven—his golf handicap and his birthday.
I’d barely driven since the accident, since George T Baker blew through a red light while on his cell phone and smashed into my passenger door.
Mom died beside me. The fire crew had taken over an hour to cut me free.
Getting behind the wheel again terrified me, but now I realised it was the lesser of two evils.
Key in hand, I tiptoed toward the garage.
The internal door opened on silent hinges—I oiled them regularly because Ridge got annoyed if they squeaked—and then I tucked the backpack into the trunk of Ridge’s Lexus.
It was time. Time to flee with the only man in my life who still mattered.
Ridge hated dogs, and the feeling was mutual, so I’d been shocked when he agreed to let me adopt a puppy. But it hadn’t taken long for me to see why he’d acquiesced. Control. It was all about control. By giving me something to love, he could also threaten to take it away if I stepped out of line.
We’d both been expecting Shiro to grow into a cute little fluffball, but he must have been younger than the veterinarian—a golf buddy of Ridge’s who drank too much, too early in the day—thought because six months later, he could put his paws on my shoulders if he stood on his back legs.
And I was five feet eight in flats, which was all I ever wore because Ridge had a complex about his height and didn’t like that I could look him in the eye. My wedding shoes were ballet pumps.
There were two shelters in town, and I hoped with every atom in me that Ridge had been telling the truth about taking Shiro to one of them.
If he’d simply abandoned him in a forest somewhere, I’d never find my boy.
But I didn’t think he’d lied, not about that.
Image meant everything to Ridge. No, he’d tell our friends that poor Shiro had been bouncing off the walls, and because both of us had work commitments, we’d surrendered him so he could find a new family with more time to exercise him.
So sad, but what else were we supposed to do?
One shelter opened at eight thirty, and the other at nine—I’d checked the times twice before I deleted my browser history.
At eight thirty, I’d be waiting outside the Biddeford Humane Society, ready to beg for my dog back.
And if he wasn’t there, I’d speed over to Saving Paws and try not to have a coronary as I waited.
How long did Benadryl last? I’d turned off the alarm clock.
The car sounded like thunder as it started, and I took a deep breath, steeling myself for what was to come.
The noose hanging from the ceiling caught my eye, and in a fit of anger, I hopped out, grabbed the pruning shears, and cut it down.
To anyone else, it was just an emergency handle for closing the garage door, but I knew better.
After today, there would be no more threats.
No more, “If you embarrass me in public, that rope’s going around the damn mutt’s neck. ”
No more.
The garage door motor rumbled to life. Why did everything seem so much louder when you were desperately trying to stay quiet?
If Ridge slept through this, I’d send the makers of Benadryl a thank-you note and recommend antihistamines to all my friends.
As I waited for the door to open, I fastened my seat belt and sent a message to Saylor.
It was already afternoon at Camp Humphreys, and what a time for her to go on a phone-free bachelorette trip.
The bride-to-be had requested “presence, not presents,” so electronic devices were banned.
Saylor wouldn’t know what I’d done until it was over.
And by “over,” I meant I’d be either holed up in a motel somewhere or dead.
Me
I did it. I left Ridge. Driving out of the garage, think I’m gonna puke.
I turned off the phone and put the car in gear, but my hand was shaking so much that I got it wrong and reversed into a shelf of ski equipment.
Dammit! A snowboard fell down and dented the trunk, and I winced even though I’d be ditching the Lexus as soon as possible.
Ridge had once sued a valet for returning his vehicle with a scratch, and the poor guy lost his job over it.
Worse, I remembered Ridge making that scratch himself when he backed into a wheelbarrow, and he’d also fired the landscaper for “leaving a hazard in an unsafe location.” The lawn.
The wheelbarrow had been on the lawn. Ridge strayed onto the grass because he was checking a pimple in the rear-view instead of looking where he was going.
A sob caught in my throat as I said a final goodbye to my home.
Although the past several years had been hard, the place held a few good memories too—puppy Shiro skidding around on polished floors, the tropical plants I’d lovingly tended in the conservatory, me filming my cooking blog in the bright and airy kitchen.
Right now, I had no idea whether I’d be able to return to the little niche I’d carved out.
Or whether my followers would still want to watch my content once they found out my carefully curated life was a lie.
I’d cast Ridge as the perfect husband because who wanted to admit their mistakes to thousands?
I couldn’t lie—there were times when I’d considered ending it all the way Ridge’s first wife had, a woman he’d painted as tragic and unstable without ever admitting the part that his actions might have played in her death.
But I chose to live.
I was taking back control, and I was going to start by rescuing Shiro.
Again.