5
I didn’t argue. I just got out of bed, lifted Lucy out of the crib, turned toward the wall, and unbuttoned my nightgown to nurse her.
“Who’s going to feed her at two in the morning?” I asked softly, without turning around. “Your mother made it very clear. No bottles in this house.”
Behind me, Julian didn’t move for a long moment. His phone buzzed again in his hand.
“Fine,” he said at last. “Take her. I’ll handle Mom.”
Then he left for the gallery.
Julian rented a two-bedroom apartment in the South End.
It wasn’t the fanciest neighborhood, but it was quiet and respectable.
The day we moved out, I made sure to pick a time when my mother-in-law was at a follow-up appointment at her private clinic. Melissa was sprawled on the living room sofa, sneering the way she always did.
“You live off my brother—what do you have to act so hard done by about? You want the high life without ever having to put up with anything? Life doesn’t work like that!”
I put on a sheepish look and nodded in agreement.
“You’re right. I really should learn from you. When you turned eighteen, your mother changed the beneficiary on all three of her trust properties to Julian alone. She was even planning to keep it from you until you got married. Looks like she worried for nothing. A woman as independent as you would never stoop to fighting over the family money—and you’d certainly never end up a parasite living off your family.”
As Melissa’s face froze, inch by inch, into stone, I took my daughter’s hand and calmly walked out.
Why did my mother-in-law feel free to threaten to throw me out of “this house” whenever she liked?
Because long before Julian and I got married, she’d used an airtight trust structure to move every property she owned into Julian’s personal trust. Legally, that multi-million-dollar brownstone was separate, premarital family property. I had no claim to it at all.
But then again, neither did Melissa.
In that case, I figured I’d start by throwing a good-sized rock into the glossy, rotten pond that was this family.
The boyfriend Melissa was dating was a nightclub lowlife drowning in debt.
I had high hopes for how much damage they could do.
On the night we moved in, Julian had been at the apartment for all of ten minutes when his phone rang.
It was Sloane. She said she’d left a very expensive pair of earrings—on loan from a sponsor for a runway show—in his office at the museum, and asked if he could go back, find them, and bring them to her.
Julian told me all about the call, very openly, and spread his hands in a show of helplessness. “The brand’s doing inventory first thing tomorrow. She probably needs them back. I don’t have anything else tonight anyway. I’ll just run them over for her.”
It was a flimsy excuse, and nothing new. Sloane had pulled that kind of thing countless times when we’d first started dating. Back then, Julian had seen straight through it and been openly disgusted.
Now I just nodded, obligingly.
“Go on, then. You can’t mess around with sponsors. If it gets late, just sleep at the house—it’s closer to the museum. Save yourself running back and forth in the middle of the night.”
Julian looked surprised.
“It’s our first night out here. You don’t want me to stay with you?”
I looked at him and gave him a sweet, mild smile.
“Work comes first.”
He stood there for two seconds. Something flickered across his face—irritation at being brushed off—and he tossed out stiffly:
“Fine. Have it your way.”
After he left, I tidied up and got Lucy settled to sleep. Then I took out the little slice of sea-salt cake I’d bought at the bakery on the corner, stuck a thin candle in it, and lit it.
“Happy thirtieth birthday, Claire Bennett.”
I said it softly to myself and blew out the candle in one breath.
Then I went and sat down at the desk by the window.
And opened a thick legal review book.
When we moved in, Julian had suggested hiring a live-in nanny to help with the baby.
I said no.
For one thing, I’d been longing for this kind of freedom, this kind of time alone, for a long time.
For another, I needed quiet.
Quiet where no one would interrupt me.
I’d drifted through life until thirty, and now, at the most important stage of a woman’s life, I had to make myself look back and take a hard, honest look at everything.
I had looks, but nothing real to back them up.
I was weak. I let things slide.
I fell apart under pressure. Whenever I felt anything, I ate for the dopamine, numbing myself with the easiest pleasure in the world, until I was trapped in a cycle that just kept coming back around.
That day, standing in front of the mirror, I’d looked at myself.
And a thought had suddenly come to me.
What if I got a divorce?
It had never taken shape in my head before. But the moment it did, I felt a kind of thrilling, shivering lightness.
But I had nothing.
No job of my own, no savings of my own. Boston was brutally expensive, and in the state I was in, I’d have a hard time getting a decent custody arrangement.
I thought it through, over and over. I had only two advantages.
One was my looks, currently sealed away under all that extra weight.
The other was focus. It was the only thing that had gotten me through my state-school degree.
So I decided to do two things.
Lose the weight.
And study for the City of Boston’s hiring exam for press and civil-service positions.
Before I could do either one, I had to get out of that suffocating house for good.
I needed time and space to recover and regroup.
Now my daughter was breathing evenly beside me, and the warm yellow light of the desk lamp fell across the open pages.
On my thirtieth birthday, forgotten while my husband went to see another woman, I was wrapped in a kind of steady, safe feeling I hadn’t felt in a long time.
Completely at peace.
