Chapter 4
I signed the divorce papers quickly, feeling like a layer of dust had been wiped from my soul.
Ethan snatched them up without looking at me again.
He pulled Kate toward the exit: “I’ll have my lawyer contact yours in a month.” But the voice inside my head was clearer: this was the last time I’d ever see him. The door slammed shut, only to be pushed open by our waiter moments later. “Should I bring out the additional dishes you ordered, ma’am?”
No one answered him. My mother, finally breaking her careful composure, began
to cry softly.
My father patted her back awkwardly, whispering useless platitudes.
Patricia sat there, frozen in shock, as if she still couldn’t process what had just
happened.
And I, the center of this disaster, felt strangely invisible.
I stood up slowly, smoothing down my $400 dress that I’d bought specially for this. dinner. “No need for more food. Just bring the check, please.”
I mechanically handed over my credit card, retrieved my coat, and walked out with legs that felt oddly numb.
Was I calm?
No. Just completely hollow.
I walked to the parking garage, sat in my car, and gripped the steering wheel. My eyes burned, but no tears came.
What was there to cry about?
I’d always known this day would come. From the moment Ethan had inexplicably shown up at my college graduation with roses, dropping to one knee in front of my
shocked roommates.
Then practically dragging me to the courthouse the next day, brushing aside all
concerns about rushing.
Everyone had tried to slow him down–we needed time for invitations, a venue, a proper dress.
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His response still echoed in my head: “If we wait, I might change my mind.” Back then, I’d mechanically signed those marriage papers too, walking out in a
daze.
His words had snapped me back to reality: “Kate’s gone to Chicago. Happy now?” The hatred in his voice had cut through me like a knife. I knew then that he despised me, blamed me for everything he’d lost.
After we married, our sex life became a monument to his resentment. Our wedding night set the tone–I waited in the hotel suite in expensive lingerie while he drank at the bar downstairs. When he finally stumbled in after midnight, he barely looked at me as he unbuttoned his shirt.
“Let’s get this over with,” he muttered, pushing me back onto the mattress without
even a kiss.
He entered me roughly, without checking if I was ready. I wasn’t. The pain made me gasp, but he mistook it for pleasure. “Don’t pretend you’re enjoying this,” he whispered harshly against my ear, his breath hot with whiskey. For four excruciating minutes, he moved mechanically above me, his eyes fixed on the wall behind my head, never once looking at my face. When he finished, he immediate/y rolled away, grabbed his phone, and started scrolling through sports scores as if I wasn’t even there, as if my quiet tears weren’t soaking into the expensive hotel pillowcase.
After that night, he only touched me when drunk enough to forget who I was. He’d come home late, stumbling into our bedroom with glassy eyes, sometimes calling me by her name as he roughly flipped me onto my stomach–so he wouldn’t have to see my face. He’d take what he wanted while I bit the pillow to keep from crying out. I’d feel him shudder above me, then collapse beside me without a word, leaving me sore and hollow. Sometimes I’d slip away to the bathroom afterward, lean against the cold tile wall, and silently finish what he never cared to, my own hand the only gentle touch I knew.
In the mornings after, he’d avoid eye contact over coffee, as if my presence was a reminder of his weakness. The pattern continued for months until eventually, het
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Whenever I reached for him, blushing and hopeful, he’d recoil as if burned.
“I married you. What more do you want from me?” he’d snarl, rolling to the far side
of the bed.
For years, when Patricia would gently ask if we had “any news yet” about grandchildren, I’d change the subject, unable to explain that her son couldn’t bear to be intimate with me..
Gradually, she stopped asking, stopped looking at me with that hopeful
expression.
More than once, I’d overheard her sighing to her friends: “I’m afraid the Marina name ends with Ethan.”
Now, perhaps, she could finally have the grandchild she’d been waiting for. And I could finally have my freedom.
