Chapter 2 - Reading From the Floor
For one second, I looked at him through fever-blurred eyes and thought:
This is how he wants to remember me.
On the floor.
Sick.
Humiliated.
Begging.
That had always been Ethan’s favorite version of me.
Not the woman who bought the house.
Not the woman who built the company that paid for the white cabinets, polished floors, chandelier, patio furniture, guest suite, and Patricia’s favorite imported dining chairs.
Not the woman whose signature had carried the mortgage before Ethan ever moved in.
No.
He preferred me weak.
Because weak women are easier to rewrite.
I pulled the papers closer.
Ethan smiled.
Patricia leaned back in her chair.
They thought I was breaking.
They did not understand that fever had burned through the last layer of denial.
My fingers shook as I turned the first page.
Then the second.
Then the third.
Ethan’s smile faded slightly.
“What are you doing?”
“Reading.”
“You don’t need to read it.”
That almost made me laugh.
Of course he thought that.
For seven years, he had counted on me not reading the room until after everyone else had already decided what I owed.
I read every line.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Despite the sweat cooling along my neck.
Despite my pulse hammering in my ears.
Despite Patricia sighing as if my consciousness had become inconvenient.
The petition was cruel, but not clever.
Ethan wanted the marriage dissolved.
Fine.
Ethan wanted no spousal support.
Fine.
Ethan wanted me to vacate “the marital residence” within thirty days.
There it was.
The trap.
He had written it as if the house belonged to both of us because we had lived in it together.
But living in a house does not make it yours.
Laughing in its dining room does not make it yours.
Inviting your mother to sit at its table and insult the woman who paid for it does not make it yours.
I turned to the signature page.
Ethan crouched lower.
“Finally.”
I looked at him.
Even through fever, even from the floor, I saw the greed under his irritation.
He had not come home angry because there was no dinner.
He had come home ready.
The divorce papers.
Patricia seated at the table like a witness.
The folder placed where he could grab it.
The shove was not part of the paperwork, maybe.
But the humiliation was.
They wanted me disoriented enough to sign whatever they put in front of me.
So I did sign.
Only where necessary.
Only where my attorney had told me to sign if Ethan ever forced the papers into my hands before we filed first.
Receipt acknowledged.
Service accepted.
No property admission.
No occupancy consent.
No waiver.
May you like
No transfer.
No mistake.
