Wretched Love

I pulled into a parking lot as true panic set in. My breathing turned rapid, and stars danced in my vision.

“Get it together, Kate,” I whispered, gripping the staring wheel.

The glint on my finger caught my eye. My wedding ring and band. Both hideously ostentatious too. Preston had upgraded three times in our eighteen-year marriage, each time at huge anniversary parties his parents threw for us yearly. Like the car, the house, the lunches, it was all for show.

This ring was worth a lot of fucking money.

Preston made sure I didn’t have the tools to escape. Made sure I didn’t have access to large sums of cash, couldn’t book anything out of the country, had all of my important identification. But his ego had given me my ticket out of his life.

Same with the earrings at my ears. The watch I wore. The purse.

All of it was bought as gifts. Not for me. For himself, so the town would see how much he spoiled his beautiful wife.

I grinned as I drove out of the parking lot thinking of what the town would say when it became clear that his spoiled, beautiful wife had left him.

Three hours later, I was driving out of the city in an old Toyota. It was bright red, smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and had only cost me a couple of thousand dollars.

I had much more cash tucked into my cheap Walmart backpack. A lot more. I hadn’t sold everything. Not at once. It would be dangerous, a woman on the road alone, carrying large amounts of cash.

No more dangerous than living in my McMansion in New Hampshire for nearly two decades, but I’d had my share of violence. I would be cautious but not afraid.

I was done being afraid.

It was just like that. A switch flipped. I wasn’t sure how such a thing was possible. Weakness was a character trait at this point. I’d been so sure I didn’t have a backbone, a personality of my own.

But whatever it was inside me that snapped, I grew from the cracks of that. Me.

There was a scene in Gone Girl—I’d watched the movie countless times and read the book twice as many—where Rosamund Pike was driving down the road in a piece of shit car, stuffing her face with food after framing her husband for her murder. She looked so utterly free in that scene. I’d watched it over and over with envy.

Not that Ben Affleck’s character quite deserved to be framed for her murder—he was a cheater and kind of a selfish asshole, but he did not deserve that.

Preston, on the other hand, thoroughly deserved to be framed for my murder. Unfortunately, I was not as smart as Amy was in the book. I did not have the guts or the intelligence to fake my own murder and frame my husband, no matter how much I fantasized about it.

It was that car scene I fantasized about. Not my trainer or my neighbor or the hot guy at the coffee shop who always flirted with me. No, it was her in that scene, free for the first time in years, knowing that no one knew where she was, and no one knew who she was.

Unfortunately, I could not Gone Girl my husband, even if I’d had the smarts and the guts. Because of my daughter. The child I adored. The child who worshipped her father and knew nothing of what kind of monster he was.

I would and did endure years of torture for my perfect daughter. I would do anything to protect her from harm. And knowing the truth about her father would hurt her. Wound her. Call in to question the entire foundation of who she was. Would affect her future and every relationship she had with a man.

No, I could not and would not do that.

I couldn’t just disappear, as much as I wanted to.

And I knew, if I did, Preston would find a way to play it to make him the hero. He’d report me missing. Fake something ridiculously elaborate. Whether it be my state of mind, some unseen enemy, I couldn’t be sure. But I knew if I let him control the narrative, I’d be screwed. Eventually back under his thumb. And that couldn’t happen. So I made a series of phone calls. To ensure that he couldn’t orchestrate a narrative. That he couldn’t warp it. Surely he’d try, I knew that. But I was fighting now. He wasn’t used to that. It would unnerve him, to see his wife’s backbone. I had the element of surprise and the upper hand.

So I made the calls.

Then, after copying down all the pertinent numbers, I smashed my phone and bought a cheap new one. Maybe it was overkill, but I wouldn’t put it past Preston to be tracking my location.

After that was done, I pulled into the nearest drive thru, got myself a triple cheeseburger and got on the freeway.

I was gone, girl.