Chapter 7
The next few months were a blur of rebuilding.
Ethan fought the divorce every step of the way, of course.
He tried to appeal the restraining order.
He tried to claim the house was his because his parents had given him the down payment (Mara proved the down payment had come from my savings account).
He tried to get out of paying me the money he owed.
But every time, Mara shut him down.
She was a force of nature.
By the end of the third month, the divorce was final.
The house was mine.
Both cars were mine.
Every cent he’d stolen was back in my bank account, plus the ten thousand in damages.
I was thirty years old.
Single.
Financially independent.
And for the first time in my adult life, I had no one telling me what to do.
I decided to keep the house.
At first, the thought of living there alone scared me.
Every corner held a bad memory.
But then I realized— it was my house now.
I could do whatever I wanted with it.
I painted the kitchen, the site of so many fights, a bright, sunny yellow.
I ripped out the old carpet Ethan had picked out and put in hardwood floors.
I bought a big, comfortable couch for the living room, the kind he’d said was “too girly.”
I hung pictures of my family and friends all over the walls.
I turned the guest room into an office, with a big desk overlooking the backyard.
Slowly, the house stopped feeling like Ethan’s.
It started feeling like mine.
The hardest part was reconnecting with my own family.
Ethan had cut me off from them completely two years before.
He’d told me my mom was too controlling, my dad was too judgmental, my little sister was a bad influence.
He’d made me block all their numbers.
Made me skip holidays.
Made me tell them I was too busy to talk.
I’d missed my sister’s college graduation.
My parents’ thirtieth wedding anniversary.
My grandma’s eightieth birthday.
I called my mom one night, my hands shaking so bad I almost dropped the phone.
She answered on the first ring.
“Elena?” she said, her voice disbelieving. “Is that really you?”
“Hi, Mom,” I said, and I burst into tears.
She drove three hours to see me the next day.
When she saw the scars on my arms, the faint yellow bruise still lingering on my ribs, she cried too.
She held me for an hour, rocking me like I was a little girl again.
“I’m so sorry,” she kept saying. “We should have known. We should have come for you. We tried, baby. We called and called, but he always said you didn’t want to talk to us. We should have known something was wrong.”
I forgave her.
There was nothing to forgive.
Ethan had manipulated all of us.
My dad came the next weekend, with my sister, Lila.
Lila was twenty now, in college, studying to be a social worker.
She was taller than me now, with my mom’s eyes and my dad’s stubborn chin.
She hugged me so tight I could barely breathe.
“I’m going to kill him,” she said into my shoulder. “I swear to God, Elena, I’m going to kill him.”
I laughed through my tears.
“Don’t you dare,” I said. “He’s not worth going to prison for.”
We spent the whole weekend together.
We ordered pizza.
We watched old movies.
We talked until three in the morning, catching up on two years of missed moments.
By the time they left on Sunday, I felt whole again.
Like a part of me that had been missing for years was finally back where it belonged.
Work was going amazing too.
I was killing it at my new job.
My boss was so impressed with my work she promoted me to head of the department after only three months.
The raise was huge.
More money than I’d ever made in my life.
I donated half of the ten thousand dollars Ethan had paid me in damages to Her Voice, the advocacy group that had helped me.
I started volunteering there one night a week, answering phones, talking to other women who were going through the same thing I had.
I told them my story.
I told them it was possible to leave.
That they weren’t alone.
That they were strong enough.
One night, a girl called who was exactly my age, married to a man who sounded exactly like Ethan.
She was scared.
She had no money, no family nearby, no idea where to go.
I talked to her for an hour.
I gave her Mrs. Greene’s number, told her she could come stay with us for as long as she needed.
When she hung up, she said, “Thank you. I was going to kill myself tonight. You saved my life.”
I sat there for a long time after that, crying.
I knew exactly how she felt.
I’d been that girl.
Alone.
Scared.
Hopeless.
And if Mrs. Greene hadn’t opened her door that rainy night, I don’t know what would have happened to me.
I realized then that my pain wasn’t for nothing.
May you like
I could use it to help other people.
I could be the person who opened the door for someone else.
