“Then let’s leave it all behind.”
“Yes. Let’s leave it all behind.”
We went downstairs with the suitcase. Robert was in the living room, sitting with his head in his hands. Carol had disappeared, probably to her room. When he saw us pass, he stood up.
“Brenda, please don’t leave. We can talk. We can fix this. I’ve been with you for eight years. Eight years. That has to mean something.”
“It means I wasted eight years of my life. But I won’t waste another day.”
“You’ll regret this.”
“Maybe. But I’d rather regret leaving than regret staying.”
We walked out of the house. The sun was shining brightly. The threat of rain had passed. The sky was clear.
Brenda stopped at the entrance. She turned to look at the house one last time.
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
“I don’t know. I don’t think I feel anything yet. It’s like I’m floating.”
“It’s normal. It’s shock. But it will pass.”
“And then what?”
“Then we live. You decide what to do with this house, with the company, with your life. But you decide. No one else.”
“I want to sell everything. I don’t want any of this. I just want to start over.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do.”
We got into the taxi I had called. As we drove away, I looked in the rearview mirror. Robert had come out to the door. He was watching us leave, his shoulders slumped, defeat written on every line of his body.
But I didn’t feel sorry for him. He had had eight years to be a good husband. Eight years to defend Brenda. Eight years to truly love her, and he had wasted every single one of those days.
Now he would have to live with those consequences.
And I finally had my daughter back.
The following months were strange, like living in two worlds at the same time. On one side was the legal part—the lawyers, the papers, the divorce process that Robert tried to drag out as long as he could, the negotiations to sell the house and the company, all that cold bureaucratic world that forced us to face the Sutton family over and over again.
On the other side was Brenda, my daughter, rebuilding herself piece by piece.
We rented a small apartment in Hollywood. Two bedrooms, a tiny kitchen, a balcony overlooking a park. It wasn’t luxurious. It didn’t have marble or crystal lamps. But it was ours.
The first weeks were the hardest. Brenda cried at night, not because she missed Robert, but because she was processing all the damage they had done to her, all the lost time, all the version of herself she had buried to please another person.
“I feel empty, Mommy,” she told me one night. “Like I don’t know who I am. I spent so much time being what they wanted that I forgot who I was.”
“Then this is the moment to remember. Or better yet, to discover yourself again.”
We started slowly. Small steps. I bought her notebooks and colored pencils, the same ones she used when she studied design.
