Chapter 2 - The Mask Slips
“I destroyed your career?”
I didn’t yell. I didn’t cry. I picked up my purse from the counter, slung the strap over my shoulder, and looked at the man I had married thirty-six hours earlier. It was as if a distorting lens had been removed from my eyes. The charming, ambitious sales director I had dated in candlelit restaurants was gone. In his place stood an overgrown boy whose entire spine was made of wet string.
“You sat there yesterday and watched your mother treat me like an indentured servant,” I said, stepping past him into the hallway. “You had a dozen chances to be a man, Brandon. You chose to be her lapdog.”
“You did this deliberately!” Rosalind screamed, lunging toward me. Her manicured fingernails were inches from my arm before George grabbed her by the shoulder and yanked her backward with unexpected force.
“Leave the girl alone, Rosalind!” George shouted, his face turning an alarming shade of plum. “You pushed her! You pushed her just like you pushed Brandon’s brother until he moved across the country and stopped calling us!”
“Don’t you dare bring Arthur into this!” Rosalind spat, turning her venom on her husband. “Arthur was seduced by that tramp from Seattle! And now this one—this cold, calculating little bean-counter—she planned this to humiliate us!”
Hannah, Brandon’s twenty-four-year-old sister, finally came sauntering out of the living room, chewing gum and scrolling through her phone. “What’s everyone screaming about? Did the director leave already? Brandon, did you ask him about an internship for my boyfriend?”
Brandon looked ready to burst into tears. He collapsed onto the dining chair Walter had just vacated, burying his head in his hands. “There is no internship, Hannah! There is no promotion! Walter is going to hand the Southwest Regional Division to Miller. Miller! A guy who doesn’t even know how to close a commercial supply contract!”
He looked up at me, his gaze brimming with sheer resentment. “Why couldn’t you just play along for one night, Charlotte? Just three hours! Would it have killed you to pretend you were happy? Was your damn pride worth two hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year?”
“My dignity isn’t for sale, Brandon,” I replied quietly. “And the fact that you think it should be tells me everything I need to know.”
I turned toward the front door.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Rosalind demanded, shaking George off her arm. “You’re his wife! You made vows before God and our family! You don’t get to blow up this family’s future and walk away!”
“I am going to my apartment,” I said.
“Your apartment?” Brandon stood up, frowning. “We agreed you were subletting your place to your cousin next week so we could save money for the down payment on the house in Del Mar!”
“We discussed it,” I corrected him. “I never signed the sublease. And thank God I didn’t.”
Before Rosalind could unleash another torrent of screeching, I walked out into the cool evening air. The front door slammed behind me, though I could still hear Rosalind’s shrill voice berating George through the double-paned glass.
I got into my Honda Civic, locked the doors, and sat there in the dark driveway for five minutes. My chest was tight, my breathing shallow. Every instinct screamed at me to break down, to sob for the fairy-tale wedding that had cost my parents twenty thousand dollars, for the white dress still hanging in the master closet, for the three years I had invested in a lie.
Instead, I reached into my purse, pulled out my phone, and opened my banking app.
*Account Balance: $37,842.19.*
The thirty-five thousand dollars my father had given me from the Phoenix land sale was sitting securely in an account held solely under my maiden name at a different bank from Brandon’s. My father’s parting words rang in my ears like a church bell on a frosty morning:
*“Getting married means building another family, not handing over the keys to your life.”*
A tear escaped and tracked cold down my cheek. “Thank you, Dad,” I whispered into the quiet car.
I started the engine. As I pulled out of the driveway, my phone illuminated the dashboard. A text from Brandon flashed on the screen:
*Charlotte, come back inside right now. My mother is having chest pains. If something happens to her, it’s on your conscience.*
May you like
I glanced at the message, swiped it away, and switched my phone to ‘Do Not Disturb.’ I was an accountant; I knew the difference between an emergency and a cheap accounting trick to manufacture guilt.
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