Chapter Thirteen Nora #3
My truth is garbage to him. My survival is garbage. My voice is garbage.
He turns fully on them now. “What have you been telling her? For five years my wife was fine. She didn’t talk like this. She didn’t think like this. And now suddenly, after meeting you two, she’s confused? Saying things that aren’t true? What the fuck did you do to her?”
I flinch.
It’s tiny. Barely a movement. Just my shoulders curling inward for a second.
Kieran’s voice is soft now. “Stop cursing.”
Julian looks like he’s about to explode. His face is red. His jaw is tight. His hands are shaking.
I breathe.
In.
Out.
Then I look at him. “Julian.” I wait for his eyes to meet mine. “That’s enough. No more talking. Now you listen.”
“I am listening—”
“No,” I cut him off. “You’re not. You’re just waiting for your turn to talk. You’re not listening to a single word I’m saying.”
My feet are flat on the floor. My spine is straight. My hands are folded in my lap, but they are not clenched. They are open. Relaxed. The hands of a woman who is not afraid.
“I’m not going back.”
He stares at me, stunned.
“And I don’t love you,” I say. “I never loved you.”
His mouth opens, then shuts.
“I don’t know why you thought I did,” I finish softly. “But I don’t.”
Julian stares at me like I’ve reached inside his chest and twisted something vital. All the blood leaves his face. His lips part, just barely. There’s wetness in his eyes. For one strange second I almost believe he’s heartbroken.
But there’s a difference between someone falling apart and someone trying to look like they’re falling apart.
“You’re being cruel right now,” he whispers, his voice trembling.
I frown. “How am I being cruel?”
“By saying you don’t love me! How can you say that? How can you just say something like that to hurt me?”
“I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m just telling the truth.”
“It’s not the truth,” he snaps. “You’re saying it to punish me. To make me feel what you felt. Is this what you want? Are you happy now? Does this satisfy you?” His eyes fill with tears. Big, wounded ones he tries to blink back. “Look at what you’re doing to me, Nora. I’m crying because of you.”
He isn’t crying because he’s sad. He’s crying because he’s frustrated, because he’s losing, because he doesn’t know what else to do. The tears are real—but they’re not for me. They’re for him.
The way he cries—
the way he makes himself small and pitiable—
the way he makes himself the victim—
All I can see is my father.
Him sitting at the kitchen table, his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking. Why do you make me do this? he would say, his voice thick with tears. Why do you push me? You know I don’t want to hurt you. You know I love you. Why do you make me so angry?
Julian is not my father. I know this. Julian has never hit me. Julian has never locked me out. Julian has never made me stand in the cold and count my own heartbeats.
But the pattern is the same. The tears. The self-pity.
His pain becomes the center of the story, eclipsing everything I have endured.
I will not fall for his tears.
“I’m not making you do anything,” I tell him. “I just want you to leave me alone. That’s all.”
He wipes his tears harshly, like they’re an embarrassment. “Stop saying things like that,” he begs. “I know I hurt you. I know I made mistakes. But please… stop.”
He draws a sharp breath. His eyes well up again.
“Nora… you love me. You iron my clothes before I even ask. You wake up before dawn to make my breakfast. You sat with me for three days when I had the flu. Every night, dinner is on the table. Even when you stopped talking to me, you never stopped taking care of me. You can’t do all of that for someone you don’t love. ”
I shake my head. “No. I did those things because I was supposed to.”
He stares at me, bewildered. “What?”
“That’s what our families agreed to when we got married,” I say plainly. “I take care of the house. The home. You. You work. You provide. You were there, Julian. You nodded along with everyone else.”
“Yes, I was there,” he says, his voice sharpening. “I know what was discussed. But stop lying. That’s not the only reason. Nobody does all of that so perfectly if it’s just a chore. You did it for love.”
“No. I did everything perfectly because you demanded it.” I hold his gaze. “You told me to get it right, to follow your schedule, not to be careless. You showed me exactly how you wanted things done. You said it wasn’t that hard to cook for two—or to clean a house that only two people lived in.”
I made sure everything was perfect because anything less was not acceptable.
His jaw clenches. “So it’s all my fault then? I’m the villain here? You were perfect, and I’m the bad husband?”
His words unlock a memory, sharp and clear.
It is not a memory I visit often. I have kept it locked away, in the part of my mind where I store the small, quiet cruelties—the ones that did not leave bruises but left something deeper.
The one time I had a fever so high the room swayed, my skin burning while my teeth chattered. I had never asked him for anything before. Never been too sick to do what I was supposed to do. But that morning, I couldn’t even stand. So I asked him if he could just order something for himself.
He said no need, that I should rest, that he’d make dinner on his own. His voice was kind. Understanding. He was being a good husband, the kind of husband who tells his sick wife to rest.
Half an hour later, a metallic clatter and a sharp curse pulled me from my feverish haze.
The sound was loud. Sudden. I dragged myself out of bed, my legs unsteady, my head pounding. The hallway swayed beneath my feet. I held onto the wall and walked.
I made it to the kitchen doorway.
He was standing over the stove, a pot boiling over, his face flushed with frustration. Water and sauce had spilled across the burner, hissing and smoking. A wooden spoon lay on the floor. Then he yelped, jerking his hand back from the scorching handle.
He shook his hand, hissing through his teeth. The skin on his fingers was red. When he saw me swaying in the doorway, he shook his head, his hand shoved under the cold tap. “Look what you did, Nora. You couldn’t have prepped something this morning? No, you needed your rest. And now look.”
A cough rattled my chest. “I was sick this morning, too—”
“Of course,” he said, his voice brittle.
“I can’t say a thing. You’re sick, so if I bring up a single problem, suddenly I’m the villain.
I’m the bad husband.” A short, hollow laugh escaped him.
“Maybe I am. If my own wife can’t be bothered to make sure I have something to eat, I must have done something to deserve this. ”
He shook his head, turned off the tap, and walked out, muttering, “Fine. I’ll just sleep on an empty stomach then.”
He left the kitchen a wreck. The overflowing pot, the splattered sauce, the dirty utensils—all of it left for me to deal with.
I stood in the doorway for a long moment. The fever was still there, burning behind my eyes. The room was still swaying. But the kitchen was a mess, and the mess was my responsibility.
I pushed myself forward and started cleaning.
My hands moved automatically. I wiped the stove. I rinsed the pot. I scrubbed the sauce off the counter. The fever made everything slow, dreamlike. I was not sure if I was awake or asleep.
Minutes later, the front door opened and closed. Julian walked back in, a takeout bag in his hand. He didn’t look at me. He took a plate from the cupboard I had just dried and left the room without a word.
I finished cleaning. I went back to bed. The fever broke sometime in the night, and the next morning, I woke up early and made his breakfast. Eggs just as he liked them. Toast with the crusts cut off. Coffee in the blue mug.
He came down smiling, thanked me, and then left for work as if nothing had happened.
We pretended it didn’t.
Julian was never cruel in the way my father was.
But he was cruel in other ways.
Quiet ways.
Dismissive ways.
Ways that made me feel like a problem, not a person.
The dismissals were small. Almost invisible. A wave of the hand. A change of subject. A you don’t understand or that’s not how it is or you’re mistaken. They were not loud. They did not leave marks. But they accumulated, year after year, until I had been erased without ever noticing it happening.
Whenever he did or said something that stung, I would swallow it down with the same old, tired thought: At least he doesn’t hit me. At least there’s a roof. At least there’s food.
The thought was a mantra. A way of making his cruelties bearable by comparing them to my father’s. He is not my father, so he is safe. He is not violent, so I am fine.
But I was not fine. I was not wrong. I was not a problem.
When he got sick, I was at his side constantly. I brought him tea, adjusted his pillows, watched over him while he slept. I didn’t leave.
Why didn’t he do the same for me?
Why was I expected to push through fever and chills to keep the house running, while he could take a day off work for a headache?
Why weren’t we…
Equals.
Like Maeve and I were.
I also lived under her roof, but she never told me the house was my duty. She never said my worth was tied to how well I took care of her. She never expected me to put her needs above my own health, my own peace.
She never made me feel small.
Maeve sees me. Julian saw right past me.
“If you never loved me then why didn’t you leave before?” he fires back, dragging me back to the present.
The tears are still wet on his cheeks, but they have stopped falling. Now there is only the sharp, desperate edge of a man who is grasping for any argument that might hold, any question that might trip me up, any crack in my story that he can wedge himself into.
“If I was so bad, if you think I was forcing you to work around the house—in the house you also lived in—why didn’t you leave? If it was so hard, why didn’t you leave me before?”
“Because I had nowhere to go.”
He scoffs immediately. “Oh, come on, Nora. Stop lying.” He shakes his head, the angry tears are drying now. They have served their purpose. They have shown me his pain, his vulnerability. Now he is done with them. “You could have left anytime. Your father left you money and property when he died—”
“No,” I cut in. “He left it to you. He put everything in your name. You were there when the lawyer read the will.”
I remember that day. The lawyer had read the document in a flat, professional voice, listing assets and properties and accounts. My father’s name, then Julian’s. My name nowhere.
Julian had looked at me then, surprised. I didn’t know he was going to do that. But he had not argued. He had not offered to share. He had simply accepted.
Julian waves a dismissive hand. “You could have asked for it back if you wanted it. He gave it to me because he knew I could manage it. You’ve never handled money in your life, Nora. But if you wanted it, you could have just asked. I would have given it to you. You can ask me for anything.”
“I’m asking you for a divorce now.”
His face hardens. “I’m not giving you that,” he says, his voice tight and trembling. “You’re only saying that to hurt me. I know it.”
He cannot imagine that I might want something for myself, something that has nothing to do with him. Every action, every word, every choice—in his mind, it is all about him.
My lawyer warned me about this.
He might fight it.
He might refuse to sign.
If he does, here’s what we’ll do…
So I say, calmly, “Okay. Then we fight.”
His entire face twists. “Stop,” he snaps. “Stop saying you want to divorce me. You don’t want that. You love me. You’re just hurt because I cheated and you want to hurt me back.”
“I’m not hurt. Your cheating never hurt me.” A bone-deep weariness settles over me, the exhaustion of saying the same words over and over to someone who would not, could not, hear them.
The more time I spent away from his roof, the clearer it became: he was never the safe man I mistook him for.
He wasn’t safe long before the cheating. He wasn’t safe long before the guilt.
The safety I thought I had found was an illusion. A story I told myself because I needed to believe that I had escaped, that I had found something better, that the roof over my head and the food on my table were worth the slow, quiet erosion of myself.
Julian’s face crumples. The tears are back, fresh and hot, cutting tracks through the dried salt of the earlier ones.
“Stop hurting me,” he sobs. “I love you. Just say you love me too.”
“No,” I say without hesitation. “And you don’t love me.”
His breath hitches.
“I never loved you,” I continue. “But I still didn’t cheat on you. I took care of you. I stood by you. I never tried to make you feel small. I never disrespected you.” I take a deep breath. “I never did any of those things to you. But you did. So stop lying. You don’t love me.”
He loved the meals I cooked. He loved the silence I kept. He loved the order I maintained. He loved what I did, not who I was.
Julian comes apart in front of me. His shoulders shake. His face crumples. The tears come faster, harder, streaming down his cheeks and dripping onto the table.
“I made a mistake!” he cries, the words ragged. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry! Stop punishing me like this!”
Even now, he isn’t hearing me. Even now, he’s trapped in the story where he’s the wronged hero and I’m the broken thing he must fix. Even now, he doesn’t see me as someone to listen to, to believe, to respect.
Even now, I am not his equal.
Julian stops for breath, his eyes wild, desperate.
I speak before he can twist the moment again. Before he can make himself the victim. Before his tears become another tool.
“I married you because I needed a roof over my head and food on my plate.” The words cost me nothing to speak now. They used to cost everything. “You married me because you wanted someone to take care of your house, to take care of you. To keep everything in order.”
“Love was never part of the equation,” I finish and stand.
The chair legs whisper against the floor. The sound is small. Almost inaudible. But it is final. The whisper of a chair being pushed back, of a woman rising, of a conversation ending.
Julian looks up at me with wet, trembling eyes—heartbroken, stunned, furious, lost.
None of it is my burden anymore.
“I never wanted you.” I watch his face as I say it, watch the words land. “And now,” I add, calm and unwavering, “I don’t need you.”
I meet his gaze one last time.
His eyes are red. His face is blotchy. He looks smaller than he did when he walked in.
“Leave.”
A beat of perfect silence.
“I’ll see you in court.”
I take my mop, put it back in its bucket, and walk straight to the back door. I step outside into the cool air and take my seat on my chair.
I still have five minutes left of my break.
And those five minutes belonged completely, absolutely, to me.