324 Nights. Not One Was Mine Chapter 09
I stopped and looked at her, expressionless.
Her mouth worked, like there was a lot she wanted to say. In the end she only got out one line.
“Did you really have to push my family to this?”
I almost laughed.
“*I* pushed you to this?”
“Did I push your son to cheat? Did I push you to slander me with those hotel records, force me out with nothing, tear my clothes off in front of strangers?”
“None of this is what I did to you. It’s what you *chose*.”
Margaret’s lips trembled. She had nothing.
I looked at her and gave her back her own words from before, one at a time.
“Some things, once you say them, you have to own.”
“Some debts get paid eventually.”
Then I turned and walked away.
I didn’t look back.
Later, I gutted the marital house and had it renovated from the ground up.
Anything connected to Ethan, I threw out.
New curtains. New couch. New bed.
Like pulling the moldering roots of that marriage out of my life.
I also began seeing a therapist regularly.
She asked me once what I most wanted to let go of.
I thought about it for a long time.
“Not him.”
“The woman I used to be. The one who kept trying to prove herself. The one who kept begging people to believe her.”
She nodded and said softly, “You’re already on your way out, Evelyn.”
She was right.
I was already out.
I went back to work. I got promoted. Little by little, I picked up the parts of my life I’d set aside for the marriage.
Boxing on the weekends. Movies with friends at night. Long road trips through school breaks—me at the wheel, my mother in the passenger seat, driving down the coast.
I discovered something I hadn’t expected: without that family in my life, even the air felt lighter.
A year later, an unknown number texted me.
It was Ethan.
He said he knew what he’d done was wrong. He’d had time to think inside. Could I come see him, just once?
I looked at the message for two seconds, then blocked the number and deleted it.
Some mistakes don’t deserve to be forgiven.
Some people aren’t worth another glance.
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