Now, sitting in the hot car, I understood why he wanted it out of sight.
They believed I would slip quietly into the background to avoid the embarrassment of a public divorce. They believed I would keep signing the operating checks for the kitchen while Gavin used our profits to pay the mortgage on Brooke’s new luxury home.
But they did not know about the original incorporation filings. They did not know that my grandmother had left me a specific legal shield in the bylaws, one that Gavin had never taken the time to read.
I put my hands on the steering wheel, my grip tightening until my knuckles turned white.
I would not go back to the empty house on Cumberland Avenue, not yet.
My hands on the steering wheel still carried the heavy scent of the white peonies left behind on the metal hospital tray.
I turned the corner onto our street and immediately lifted my foot from the gas pedal.
Brooke’s blue Volvo was parked in my driveway, angled slightly as if she had left in a hurry. It sat right where I usually parked my own vehicle, leaking a small, dark circle of oil onto the clean gray pavers we had installed the previous summer.
I pulled over to the curb three houses down, behind a tall hedge of overgrown boxwoods that blocked the afternoon sun.
My hand went to the gold bracelet on my left wrist, my fingers tracing the cool, flat links. The metal felt heavy, a solid weight against my skin while everything else in my life seemed to be shifting.
I did not get out of the car. I sat and watched the front porch of my own house, waiting for a door to open or a curtain to twitch.
The house looked exactly as it had when I left for Chicago four days ago. The brick was the same soft red, the black shutters perfectly straight, the lawn manicured and green.
Yet the sight of that blue car made the front path look like a border I was no longer allowed to cross.
