5. Already Gone
Chapter five
Already Gone
Monday morning broke with the pale, gray light of a typical Chicago spring. The alarm went off at six. My body moved through the familiar choreography of my life as if nothing had changed.
I stood in the master bathroom, brushing my teeth while Ian adjusted the knot of his silk tie in the mirror.
“Big day today,” Ian said, smoothing his hands over the lapels of his suit jacket. He met my eyes in the reflection and offered me an easy smile. “I’m pitching the new logistics software to the regional VP at three. Might be late tonight if we go out for drinks.”
“Good luck,” I said. My mouth was full of toothpaste, and my voice was perfectly steady.
Might be late tonight. It was the same excuse he had used at least a dozen times in the past six months. Before Friday, I would have texted him at five to ask how the pitch went. Today, I just kept brushing.
“Love you,” he called out, grabbing his briefcase from the bedroom chair. He walked toward the bathroom doorway, leaning in for a quick kiss.
“See you tonight,” I replied. I deliberately bent over the sink to spit out the foam, offering him only the back of my head.
He tapped the doorframe instead and walked away. His footsteps faded down the stairs, followed by the dull thud of the front door shutting.
I waited exactly sixty seconds. Then, I went to work.
I’d emailed my boss earlier, citing a severe migraine. By eight thirty, I was sitting across from a personal banker in a branch three towns over. It was a completely different financial institution from the one Ian and I used. The brightly lit office smelled faintly of floor wax and stale coffee.
“I need to open an individual checking account and a savings account,” I told the young man behind the desk. “And I need to initiate an immediate wire transfer from an external account.”
He clicked his mouse a few times. “Absolutely. How much will we be transferring today?”
I handed him a slip of paper. The night before, I had done the math, calculating exactly fifty percent of our joint checking and savings balances.
Ian’s secret fifteen thousand dollars was sitting in a separate account at our old bank, and I left that number entirely out of my equation.
That cash belonged to the wedding vendors now.
The banker blinked at the number on the paper. “All at once?”
“All at once,” I confirmed.
I knew the risk. If Ian checked the primary savings account today, he would see half the money missing.
But Ian only logged into the banking app on the first of the month to make sure his commission check had cleared.
Today was the twelfth. I had a nearly three-week blind spot, and that was all I needed.
By nine fifteen, the accounts were open and the wire was completed.
By ten thirty, I was standing in the empty living room of a high-rise apartment in the West Loop.
It was twenty minutes and an entire world away from the Oak Park colonial.
The walls were painted a crisp white, and the floors were polished concrete.
Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the sprawling skyline of the city.
There was no yard to mow, no gutters to clean, and no space for a guest room that Diane could commandeer.
It was stark. It was quiet. It was mine.
“The building has a private dog run on the fourth-floor terrace,” the leasing agent said as she handed me a heavy envelope of keys. “The fob gets you into the secure parking garage. You’re all set, Gemma. Welcome home.”
“Thank you,” I said.
For ten minutes after she left, I stood alone in the empty apartment.
I walked over to the glass and pressed my hand against the cool pane.
Below me, the traffic on the expressway moved in a silent river.
For the first time in days, the tight band of tension around my ribs loosened.
This was my sanctuary. This was where the fallout of my divorce wouldn’t reach.
But I couldn’t stay. I had an evacuation to complete.
I drove back to the house in Oak Park and pulled my SUV directly into the garage. I lowered the heavy door, sealing myself in.
This wouldn’t be an easy task, but from the moment I’d seen my husband and my sister fucking, I’d been ready for it. Ready to start over.
I walked into the kitchen and pulled a box of forty-two-gallon black contractor bags from under the sink.
If you wanted to move out of a house without your spouse noticing, you didn’t use cardboard boxes. Boxes were rigid. Boxes invited questions. Boxes looked exactly like a departure.
Black garbage bags just looked like spring cleaning.
I started in the home office. It was strangely satisfying to extract the pieces of my life from the home I’d once treasured.
I opened the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and pulled out my birth certificate, my Social Security card, my passport, and the deed to my car.
My whole life, in a pile of papers. I put them in a thick manila envelope and dropped them into the bottom of the first bag.
Next came Tucker’s thick veterinary file and his spare thyroid medication, along with the expensive orthopedic bed I refused to leave behind. His file alone was perhaps more important to me than my own documents.
I moved upstairs to the master bedroom. Tucker followed me, his nails clicking a soft rhythm on the hardwood. He sat in the doorway, his head tilted, watching as I opened my jewelry box.
I didn’t take the diamond earrings Ian had given me for our fifth anniversary. They were bought with joint money—my money—but I didn’t want them touching my skin ever again. I took my grandmother’s pearl necklace and the vintage gold watch my father had left me. Nothing else.
Then, I tackled the closet.
This was the delicate part. I couldn’t leave empty hangers, and I couldn’t leave obvious gaps in the dresser drawers. I had to hollow out the space while leaving the visual facade perfectly intact.
I pulled my expensive winter coats from their garment bags and shoved them into a black bag, replacing them with cheap dresses I never wore.
For my best designer heels, I shifted a handful of flats to fill the empty space on the shoe rack.
I took all my good underwear, leaving only the frayed pairs in the top drawer, and packed the three tailored suits I wore for major client pitches.
The sensible blazers and cardigans Ian was used to seeing me in stayed exactly where they were.
I worked for three hours, moving with a frantic efficiency Piper would have envied. Sweat prickled at the back of my neck. My hands were covered in a fine layer of dust from the back of the closet shelves.
By two in the afternoon, I had filled six massive black contractor bags. They contained everything of actual value I owned. The rest of the house—the throw pillows, the Le Creuset Dutch oven, the framed photos on the walls, the furniture—was just scenery. I didn’t care if it all burned.
I dragged the bags down the stairs one by one. The thick plastic rustled loudly against the wood. I hauled them into the garage and heaved them into the back of my SUV, pulling the privacy cover over the trunk so nothing was visible through the windows.
My phone buzzed in my back pocket. I jumped, my heart knocking hard and painfully against my ribs.
If something went wrong now, of all times, I didn’t know what I’d do.
I pulled it out to find a text from Piper.
Mom is driving me crazy about the seating chart. Can you call her and tell her Spencer’s cousins can’t sit at the head table? She won’t listen to me.
It was like something out of a fever dream. I stood in the dusty garage, surrounded by the physical evidence of my escape, reading a message from the woman who had blown my life apart. She was demanding I fix another one of her minor inconveniences.
I typed back: In back-to-back meetings all afternoon. Just put them at table four. Mom will get over it.
Ugh, fine, Piper replied instantly. Glad someone is being reasonable. Thanks, Gem.
I locked my phone and tossed it onto the passenger seat. Thank God that was over.
I opened the garage door and drove to the West Loop high-rise with the six bags. The slow crawl of traffic weighed on me more than ever before, but by some miracle, I made it. Once I’d reached my building, I dragged the bags into the freight elevator.
By the time I was done, my arms ached and my shoulders were burning. But I had dumped my whole life in the center of the pristine, empty living room. The bags looked like ugly boulders against the polished concrete. And yet, they represented my new beginning.
It was four thirty.
I drove back to Oak Park and parked the SUV in the driveway. So far, there was no sign anyone had noticed what I’d done.
I walked into the house and immediately went upstairs. It felt almost decadent to take time for a break, but I needed it. I took a hot shower, washing the dust and the sweat off my skin.
The dirty water went down the drain, and I watched it with a smile. Soon, that would happen to my marriage, and I couldn’t wait.
Once I was done, I left the shower and dried my hair. I put on the frayed underwear I had deliberately left behind, followed by a pair of gray sweatpants and a faded college T-shirt.
My facade of a plain, compliant wife was almost complete.
Smiling to myself, I went downstairs to the kitchen. I opened the refrigerator, pulled out a container of leftover baked ziti from two nights ago, and scraped it into a saucepan on the stove.
At five forty-five, the heavy wooden front door swung open.
“Hey,” Ian called out, his voice echoing down the hall.
“In the kitchen,” I called back. I stirred the pasta, watching the tomato sauce bubble and spit against the metal.
Ian walked into the room, his tie already off. His collar was unbuttoned, and his jacket was slung casually over one shoulder. He looked energized, his skin slightly flushed.
“The pitch went great,” he announced, dropping his briefcase by the island. He walked up behind me and wrapped his arms loosely around my waist. Resting his chin on my shoulder, he looked at the food on the stove. “Smells good. Did you work from home?”
“Yeah,” I said, keeping my eyes fixed on the wooden spoon in my hand. “Just grinding through emails. I decided to do a little spring cleaning on my lunch break, too. I bagged up a bunch of old clothes for Goodwill.”
“Good idea,” Ian said dismissively. “This house has too much junk in it anyway.”
He kissed my cheek. He didn’t notice that I flinched. I’d never been more grateful for his self-centered arrogance. “I dropped the bags off a few hours ago,” I lied effortlessly.
We sat down at the kitchen island. Ian talked for twenty minutes about his software pitch, the regional VP’s reaction, and a joke he had made in the boardroom that landed perfectly. He ate his pasta, completely oblivious, totally secure in the little kingdom he thought he ruled.
I ate in silence, nodding at all the right intervals. I looked at the kitchen around me. The expensive marble countertops. The custom cabinets. The polished hardwood floors.
It felt like a stage set. A meticulously constructed backdrop for a play that had already been canceled.
Ian thought he was looking at his wife. He thought he was looking at the woman who managed his life, paid his bills, and fixed all his problems.
He didn’t know the closet upstairs was practically empty. He didn’t know his bank account was going to detonate in less than three weeks. He didn’t know the papers ending our marriage were currently sitting on a lawyer’s desk downtown.
He thought I was right here with him.
I took a bite of cold ziti, focusing entirely on the taste of the tomato sauce.
I wasn’t here at all. I was already gone in every way that mattered. I just hadn’t told him yet.