His words sank invisible claws deep and tore at her, underneath her unmarked skin. Her face burned with greater fury and humiliation.
She made her shaking lips form words. “The second time you cheated. That was when I knew I didn’t want to have children. Years passed, and now here we are. I’m almost forty, you’re over forty. And I’m looking back over the past twenty years of my life, and all I can think is what a goddamn waste, and none of it was my fault.”
He barked out a harsh laugh. “You’re delusional.”
“Did I ever cheat on you?” she snapped. “Did I?”
“Of course you didn’t,” he growled. “You barely knew how to part your legs.”
The calculated cruelty in his words shredded every tender memory they had shared—every tender moment she had thought they had shared—and the depth of his anger confounded her. She felt wounded and bloodied. Was she really that cold and inflexible? That unlovable?
No. She would not let him do this to her.
Pulling herself together, she thrust away the pain, took a step forward and stabbed at his chest. “Quit trying to justify what you did by tearing me down. I was the perfect wife. I was great in bed, I took all the right classes, and I worked out and kept my figure. I was patient, and I learned how to cook all the right things. I always put your career first, and for what? You are a goddamn waste of space, and I am done living a cliché.”
“Jesus, you two,” Russell growled, shouldering his blunt figure between them. “Will you quit burning down your lives in front of everybody and shut the fuck up?”
Awareness pierced the anger in Austin’s gaze, and he looked mortified. That did her hurting heart a little bit of good.
“I don’t think so,” she told Russell. Underneath everything else, she saw the surprise in both Austin’s and Russell’s eyes that she would dare to talk back to the managing partner. Turning her attention back to Austin, she shouted, “You had that woman in my house. In my bed. No, I will not shut the fuck up!”
“Forget about the bar,” Russell said to the strange man. “This evening is over. We should be going.”
“No, you gentlemen go ahead and stay,” Molly said. She glared at Austin until his gaze slid away. “There’s a lot of booze in the house, and I’m sure Austin could use some commiseration over his frigid bitch of a wife who won’t spread her legs or shut up when she’s told to. I’ll be the one who leaves.”
Turning away, she charged through the people who still remained and jogged up the stairs to the master suite. Moving swiftly, she pulled out her suitcases and threw things in. Underwear, casual clothes, shoes, toiletries…
She needed all her jewelry. There was quite a bit of money tied up in it, and she wouldn’t leave a single piece behind.
What else, what else? What are you supposed to take with you when you burn down your life?
Financial documents.
Right now Austin was busy dealing with the important people and contacts in his professional life, trying to smooth over a mortifying situation. But when he had time to think, he would think like a lawyer.
She took her suitcases down the back stairs. She could hear a few voices still talking at the front of the house.
Leaving the cases by the back door, she strode into Austin’s office, opened the floor safe, and stuffed everything into a large leather satchel without examining it—investment portfolios, car titles, CDs, cash, wills, advance directives, both of their passports.
He wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. He needed to stay and face whatever happened next.
After she had cleaned out the safe, she shut it and dug the household checkbook out of the upper drawer of Austin’s desk. First thing in the morning, she would go to the bank and transfer their liquid assets into her own bank account. He had enough to clean up from the fallout of this evening. Relationships to bolster. No doubt a mistress to complain to. With any luck, he wouldn’t expect her to move so fast.
While she worked, wetness streamed down her face and her emotions raged all over the place, rampant and chaotic. Pain and self-recrimination were a large part of it.
She was almost forty years old and childless, with a patchwork history of working part-time at various socially acceptable jobs and volunteering at socially acceptable charities. She had spent all her adult life trying to fit into the right-sized box.
Somehow she needed to unchain her mind. Needed to discover her authentic self and try to live that Molly’s life, before it was too late.
Slinging the leather satchel onto one shoulder, she slipped into the kitchen. Just before she pulled her suitcases out the door, she looked around one last time.
The kitchen counters were littered with open bottles, glasses, trays of uncooked pastry puffs, the bare vanilla-berry cake. Austin had a mess on his hands. That, along with work, would be more than enough to distract him while she took care of business in the morning.
All those empty bedrooms in a showcase house, and he had to take that other woman into hers. All those empty, childless bedrooms. One last wave of rage and pain burst through her.
The kitchen lights flickered. As the entire house fell into darkness, she wheeled her suitcases into the rainy night. Nobody approached as she threw her luggage into the back of the Escalade and climbed in. Relief washed over her raw nerves as she drove away.
The SUV’s headlights lit the edges of the wet, burgeoning foliage that hemmed the neighborhood streets. Black pressed on the other side of overhanging branches, turning sights that had been long familiar strange, until it felt as if she traveled down a secret tunnel.
Immense shapes seemed to lurk in the trees. She thought she saw a wolf watching her, and a raven. Each one melted back into leaves and shadows as she drove past it.
Then she broke out of the foliage into an open area by the entrance to the interstate. Massive relief lifted her up, as if she had traveled an unimaginable distance and crossed an invisible border to a new country.
After a single glance back at the forest from which she had emerged, she turned onto the highway and drove into the city.
She thought, I’m almost forty years old and I’m just being born.
* * *
Russell Sherman wasn’t the type to let go easily once he had his mind fixed on something. He had his mind fixed on forging a connection with Josiah, and he held on like an octopus gripping with all tentacles.
In the end, however, he didn’t hold a candle to Josiah’s force of will. After finally extricating himself, Josiah drove swiftly, taking a circuitous route as his mind filled with images from the wrecked dinner party, like lurid snapshots of a crime scene.
The district attorney had a two-bedroom loft apartment in an upscale building near downtown Atlanta, and it was filled with carefully curated items. Josiah also owned an old four-bedroom, two-story house outside the city limits that he had bought under a different identity, and that was where he drove now.
The house was located down a quiet country lane that dead-ended at the property. It had a three-quarter-acre yard that bordered a large farm field and a patch of old-growth woods. The isolation and privacy suited him.
This place, too, had carefully curated furniture—just enough arranged at the front window so that the house looked occupied when the blinds were up. Aside from a few lamps that were scattered throughout the rooms and set to operate on timers, most of the house was empty.