Chapter 2 - My House
By eight the next morning, I had filled three laundry baskets with Sloan's things.
Hair products from my bathroom. Shoes from the mudroom. Makeup from the downstairs powder room. Sweaters from the linen closet. A curling iron from the cabinet where Daniel used to keep extra towels.
I carried everything to the guest bedroom.
At nine fifteen, Sloan came downstairs wearing my blue robe.
She stopped when she saw the baskets.
"What is this?"
"Your belongings."
"Why are they in here?"
"Because this is the room you and Harrison use."
She laughed once. "Are you serious?"
I looked at the robe.
"Take that off."
Her mouth opened.
"Excuse me?"
"That's mine. Take it off."
For almost a year, Sloan always had another joke or insult ready.
That morning she had nothing.
She went upstairs, changed, and slammed three doors hard enough to shake picture frames.
By noon I had installed a lock on my bedroom door and another on Daniel's office. I moved their food to one refrigerator shelf and cleared a single pantry cabinet.
When Harrison came home, he opened the refrigerator and stared at the empty lower shelves.
"Where's everything?"
"My groceries are on my shelves."
He turned. "You expect us to buy our own food?"
"You're thirty-five."
"I'm unemployed."
"You have unemployment benefits. Sloan has a job."
Sloan appeared behind him. "This is ridiculous."
"Temporary housing was supposed to be temporary."
Harrison rubbed both hands over his face. "Can we please not do this?"
That sentence had controlled me for eleven months.
Can we not do this?
Meaning: Can you swallow it so I don't have to deal with my wife?
"We're already doing it," I said.
For four days, the house filled with slammed cabinets, loud sighs, whispered arguments, and the cold theater of people determined to make me regret having boundaries.
I didn't.
Each time Harrison mentioned the purse, I said no.
Each time Sloan complained about storage, I pointed toward the bedroom.
And each time they got angry, I discovered something strange.
Their anger did not kill me.
On the fifth morning, I drove to First County Bank to remove Harrison as an authorized user from the emergency account Daniel and I had created years earlier.
I expected paperwork.
Instead, the banker stopped typing.
Her smile disappeared.
"Ms. Bennett," she said carefully, "have you been reviewing the recent activity?"
My stomach tightened.
"What activity?"
May you like
She turned the monitor toward me.
And I saw the first withdrawal.
