Chapter 1 #2
“Oh, Kori. I’m so sorry. Where are you? I’m coming to get you.” I look around at the empty park. “I don’t even know what to do now, Jen. I gave up everything for him. My career, my independence...”
“You didn’t give up everything,” she says firmly.
“You’re still you. That brilliant, stubborn woman I’ve known forever is still in there.
The one who graduated top of our class in college and had three job offers before graduation.
” Her words hit me like a splash of cold water.
She’s right. I’m still me. Somewhere beneath the perfect wife Mark wanted me to be, the real Kori is still there.
“Can you meet me?” I ask, suddenly not wanting to be alone with my thoughts.
“Come to my place. I’ll make tea,” she responds without hesitation.
I take a deep breath, feeling something shift inside me. The pain is still there, raw and throbbing, but alongside it is something else. Something that feels like freedom.
A half hour later, I’m at Jen’s apartment, my eyes red-rimmed but finally dry. She hands me a mug of tea that I accept gratefully, wrapping my fingers around its warmth.
“You need to get away,” she says decisively. “From this whole situation. Give yourself space to think.”
I nod, staring into my tea. “I can’t go home. Not yet.”
“What about Wavecrest?” Jen suggests sitting beside me on her sofa. “My family’s old cottage in Ireland? Nobody will find you there.”
I blink, memories of the quaint stone cottage near the Irish coast flooding back. Jen’s family had taken me there once during college break. It was remote, peaceful—exactly what I need right now.
“Ireland?” I whisper, the idea taking root. “That’s... actually perfect.”
“The keys are in my desk drawer. No one’s been there in months, but Mrs. O’Malley from the village still checks on it weekly. The place is yours as long as you need.”
My mind races with logistics. “My passport is at home. In the safe.”
Jen’s eyes narrow. “When will Mark be home?” I check my watch. “Not for another three hours. He was finalizing some big merger before the party.”
“Then we have time,” she says, already grabbing her car keys. “We’ll get your passport and whatever else you need. Pack light—you can buy whatever you need there.”
As we drive to my house—no, Mark’s house now—I feel oddly detached, like I’m watching someone else’s life unravel. The suburban streets look different somehow, as if the betrayal has altered even the physical landscape around me.
“What about work?” Jen asks as we turn onto my street. I laugh, the sound hollow.
“What work? I’ve been playing housewife for four years.”
“You know what I mean,” she says gently. “What will you do for money?” The question jolts me back to reality. “I have my own savings account. He doesn’t know about it.”
A small act of rebellion I’d maintained, squirreling away birthday money, Christmas bonuses from when I still worked, and skimming money from the monthly budget he gave me. Not much, but enough to buy time.
“I can e-transfer it to you, and then if I need any, you can wire it to me?” I say as we get out of the car. She nods as we head towards the garage. I flip open the key panel and enter the code. As we wait for the door to open, I feel that at any moment, Mark will come barreling in the driveway.
His 1954 Ferrari 250 GTO gleams under the overhead lights—a $70 million trophy he polishes every Sunday morning while I make his breakfast. As I make my way through the garage, behind me comes the unmistakable sound of metal dragging across metal.
I turn to find Jen standing beside the car, keys dangling from her fingers. “Ooops. My hand slipped,” she says, not looking remotely sorry.
I shot her a watery smile as I squeezed her arm. The four-inch gash along the driver’s side door says everything I can’t.
“Come on.” She throws her arm over my shoulder, and together we walk to the door that leads into a mud room. Inside, the house greets me with its museum-like perfection. Every surface gleams in the lamplight, while every pillow sits at the exact angle Mark prefers.
I’d half-expected to find some evidence of their affair strewn about, but of course not—Lana had been with me all morning, and Mark would never risk disrupting his carefully curated world.
“I’ll keep watch,” Jen says, positioning herself by the front window. “You pack.”
I move through the house on autopilot, grabbing essentials.
Passport from the safe. Some underwear and a few days' worth of clean clothes.
My laptop. The flash drive with all my important documents.
The diamond earrings my grandmother left me—the ones Mark always said were “too old-fashioned” for me to wear.
In the bathroom, I pause, staring at my reflection.
I hardly recognize myself. When did I start wearing my hair this way?
When did I begin choosing clothes in the muted colors Mark preferred?
My closet is filled with beige, cream, and pale pink.
I don’t even like pink— but it was the ‘sophisticated palette’ he’d called it.
On impulse, I grab the scissors from the drawer and cut a chunk of my carefully maintained hair.
It falls to the sink, a physical manifestation of breaking free.
I keep cutting until my long hair becomes a choppy, uneven mess.
It’s terrible, but it’s mine. I grab the reddest lipstick I own —the one he always griped about, saying it looked trashy — and pull the cap off.
The crimson glides across my lips, staining them with defiance. I stare at my reflection—wild-eyed, choppy-haired, red-lipped—and suddenly feel more alive than I have in years. This woman looking back at me isn’t Mark’s perfectly curated wife. She’s someone new. Someone dangerous.
Without thinking, I drag the lipstick across the bathroom mirror, my hand steady as I form each letter… FUCK YOU. I lean forward and press my lips against the glass, leaving a perfect scarlet imprint beside my message—the kiss of death to our marriage.
“Kori?” Jen’s urgent whisper reaches me. “A car just pulled into the driveway. Not Mark’s—it’s a blue sedan.”
Lana. It has to be. I take one last look at my handiwork—my declaration of independence written in MAC Ruby Woo—and smile.
Let him see it when he comes home. Let him know exactly what I think of his unfaithfulness.
I grab my packed bag and rush to where Jen is waiting, her eyes widening when she sees my transformation.
“Holy shit,” she whispers. “You look...”
“Unhinged?” I suggest running my fingers through my jagged hair.
“Magnificent,” she corrects, a slow smile spreading across her face. “Like the Kori I remember.”
Both our eyes zero in on the front door as the sound of keys sliding into the lock ricochets off the walls of the foyer.
“Back door,” I hissed, grabbing her hand. We slip out through the kitchen just as I hear the lock in the front door click.
“Fuck, I need my inhaler!” I whisper as I yank open the kitchen drawer where I keep my spare ones.
My fingers fumble through the drawer, searching desperately for the familiar plastic inhaler.
The stress is already making my chest tight, and the last thing I need is an asthma attack while fleeing my own home.
“Got it,” I breathe, clutching the inhaler as we slip out the back door. In Jen’s car, heart pounding, I duck down as we drive past Lana’s parked car. She doesn’t see us.
“That was close,” Jen says, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. Nodding, I sit up once we’re safely away, touching my newly shorn hair. “I need a ticket to Ireland.”
“Already on it,” Jen says, handing me her phone. On the screen is a booking page for a flight leaving tonight. “I started looking while you were packing.”
“Tonight?” I ask, startled.
“The sooner the better,” she says firmly. “Before you change your mind. Before they try to talk you into forgiveness.”
She’s right. If I stay, there will be explanations, tears, promises. Mark will try to charm his way back, and part of me—the part that’s spent five years loving him—might be tempted to believe him. “Booked it,” I say, a strange calm settling over me.
∞∞∞
Two hours later, I’m boarding a plane with nothing but a carry-on suitcase and a one-way ticket. The woman at the check-in counter had raised an eyebrow at my lack of return flight, but I just smiled my new, wild smile and said, “I’m not sure when I’ll be coming back.”
Jen walks me to the security checkpoint and hugs me fiercely.
“Here.” She thrusts a phone into my hands. “It’s my old one, I already activated it for international texting and calling. Promise you’ll check in,” she demands. “And remember, you’re not running away—you’re running toward something. Yourself.”
My own phone buzzes in my pocket, and without looking at it, I already know it’s either Mark or Lana. I pull it from my pocket and hand it to her. “Throw this out the window on your way home, will you?”
She gives me a watery smile and nods, “Of course.”
Over the loudspeaker, we hear that my gate is open for boarding.
“I’ll be fine,” I tell her as we hug for the last time, and for the first time today, I actually believe it.
On the plane, I lean back in my seat, close my eyes, and, for the first time in years, take a full, deep breath. The air tastes like freedom. I know I’m going to be fine.