The wedding ring on my finger caught the early light.
Less than twenty-four hours earlier, Hunter had slid it onto my hand while promising to love and respect me.
Now I could still hear his voice in that kitchen.
Learn your place.
I took out my phone and called my father.
Mr.
Patterson answered quickly.
“Jamie?”
I tried to speak normally.
I couldn’t.
He heard it immediately.
“What happened?”
“Hunter hit me.”
There was a silence.
Not the cowardly silence from the breakfast table.
A different kind.
The kind that came when someone was forcing himself to stay calm enough to be useful.
“Where are you?”
“Outside his mother’s house.”
“Are you safe right now?”
“Yes.”
“Go to Oak Ridge.
I’ll meet you there.”
I drove away from Ironwood without looking back.
During the drive, Hunter called six times.
I didn’t answer.
Then the messages started.
The first one said I had embarrassed him.
The second said his mother was hysterical.
The third told me to stop acting childish and come back so we could discuss things privately.
There was no apology.
A message from Brooke arrived next.
You ruined Mom’s morning over nothing.
I read it twice.
Over nothing.
I saved every message.
By the time I reached Oak Ridge, my father was waiting near the entrance.
The moment he saw my face, his expression hardened.
He didn’t ask whether I had provoked Hunter.
He didn’t ask what I had said.
He didn’t tell me marriage was difficult.
He simply said, “Show me what you have.”
Inside the apartment, I placed the folder on the kitchen counter.
The apartment looked almost absurdly peaceful.
Wedding gifts still sat unopened near the wall.
My overnight bag was beside the bedroom door.
Two champagne glasses from the previous evening stood in the sink.
This was supposed to be our first morning as husband and wife.
Instead, my father and I reviewed paperwork.
The apartment contract was there.
My financial documents were there.
The statements for the credit cards Hunter had been using as an authorized user were accessible through my accounts.
I began locking what I could lock and separating what belonged to me from what Hunter had treated as automatically his.
My father watched quietly.
“You don’t have to decide your entire life today,” he said.
“I already decided one thing.”
