Chapter 3 - THE GARAGE AT DAWN
He stood beneath the bare garage light wearing a gray work shirt and jeans. My car keys hung from his belt. The cordless drill rested on the workbench beside him.
For one second, neither of us spoke.
Then Caleb looked at the duffel bag.
“Going somewhere?”
I backed toward the open garage door. The sky beyond it was beginning to lighten, turning the alley a flat winter gray.
“I’m staying with Erin.”
“No.”
It was not an argument. It was the tone someone uses to correct a machine.
I reached for my phone, but Caleb moved faster. He took it from my hand and threw it against the concrete. The screen cracked, though the message to Erin had already gone through.
BLUE MUG.
He opened the duffel and scattered my clothes across the floor. When he found the envelope of cash, he laughed.
“You’ve been stealing from me.”
“It was my paycheck.”
“Everything in this marriage is ours until you decide it isn’t?”
He found the folded copy of my letter next. His expression changed as he read the lines about the forged loan application and the evidence I had saved.
“Where are the copies?”
I said nothing.
He tore the note down the middle, then again, until the pieces fluttered around his boots.
“You think you can ruin me and walk away?”
I moved toward the alley.
Caleb caught me and pulled me back into the garage. What happened next did not feel real enough to belong to my life. The dropped keys. The gray duffel against the wall. His knee pressing me against the floor. The electric whine of the tool starting somewhere behind me.
I begged him to stop.
He leaned close enough that I could smell coffee on his breath.
“You don’t get to leave me.”
The tool touched one knee.
Then the other.
May you like
I remember pain, but not in a form language can hold. I remember Caleb saying, “You will crawl for the rest of your life.” I remember the garage ceiling moving farther away even though I had not moved at all.
Then there was nothing.
