“I said no. I want you to leave today.”
Robert took a step toward me, and for the first time I saw something dangerous in his eyes.
“You can’t kick us out just like that. There are laws.”
“There are laws, yes. And I followed all of them. I have the legal right to ask you to vacate the property. And that is exactly what I am doing.”
“We need time. At least a month.”
“You have until the end of the day. Pack your things and go.”
“This is inhumane.”
“Inhumane? You want to talk about inhumane? Was it human to make Brenda clean on her knees? Was it human to call her useless? Was it human to cheat on her while she gave you every cent she had?”
No one answered.
“You have until six o’clock this evening,” I repeated. “If you are still here at that time, I will call the police and have you removed by force.”
Carol slumped into her chair. Suddenly, she looked old. All that haughtiness, that arrogance, had vanished. What remained was a frightened woman who had just lost everything.
“Where are we going to go?” she asked with a small voice.
“That is not my problem. You should have thought about that before spending money you didn’t have, before mortgaging everything, before living a lie for years.”
Robert approached Brenda once more.
“My love, please don’t let her do this. We are your family. We are married.”
“Not anymore,” Brenda said.
“What?”
“We are not married anymore. I’m filing for divorce.”
“Brenda, no. Please, we can fix this. I can change. I can—”
“I don’t want you to change anymore. I don’t want anything from you anymore. I just want you out of my life.”
“But I love you.”
“No, you don’t love me. You never loved me. You used me just like she used me. Just like everyone used me. But no more.”
She turned to me.
“Let’s go, Mommy.”
“Are you sure?”
“Completely.”
We left the dining room together. Behind us, we heard Carol crying, Robert shouting, but we didn’t stop. We went up to Brenda’s room. She started taking her clothes out of the closet. There wasn’t much. A few old dresses, worn-out underwear, a pair of shoes.
“Is this everything?” I asked.
“The rest belongs to them. Or they bought it. I don’t want anything that comes from them.”
She found the box with the embroidered sheets, the ones I had made for her. She took them out carefully.
“I’m taking these. We’re going to get them fixed. They’ll be like new.”
“No,” she said. “I want them like this, torn, to remember. To never forget what happened here.”
She packed everything into a small suitcase. Then she looked around the room.
“Eight years,” she said. “Eight years of my life in this place and I don’t have a single thing I want to keep. Not a single photograph, not a single memory, nothing.”
