Chapter 2: The Apartment He Made Her Endure
The basement apartment looked smaller after Ava learned it had been chosen as a stage.
The ceiling stain above the stove had spread again during the rain.
A bowl sat under the leak, half full of brown water.
The sofa sagged on one side because Nathan said new furniture was irresponsible.
The heater clicked twice, failed, and went quiet.
Ava stood in the doorway with the torn bread bag in her hand.
She had once called this place temporary.
Then she called it sacrifice.
Now she understood it had been a set built for a test she never agreed to take.
Nathan’s old jacket hung by the door.
The cheap one.
The one he wore when they visited discount shops and counted coins at checkout.
Ava touched the sleeve and felt nothing.
Not sadness.
Not nostalgia.
Only disgust at how carefully he had dressed the lie.
In the kitchen, the cupboards held pasta, tinned beans, and the cheapest tea from the lower shelf.
Ava had learned every discount day in the neighbourhood.
She had cut her own hair.
She had skipped dental appointments.
She had taken night shifts at the care home when Nathan said his father’s debts were worse again.
His father had been dead for years.
That was what Nathan told her.
Now she wondered if even that grief had been borrowed.
Ava opened the drawer beside the sink.
Inside was the little notebook where she tracked every household expense.
Rent.
Utilities.
Debt payments.
Margaret’s medicine.
Nathan’s business training course.
Nathan’s emergency travel.
Nathan’s mother’s private treatment, supposedly.
Line after line.
A marriage written like a rescue plan.
She carried the notebook to the bedroom.
The mattress dipped where springs had broken last winter.
Nathan had said they should wait.
“We are not rich people,” he had joked.
Ava had laughed because she loved him.
She opened the wardrobe.
Half of it held Nathan’s poor-man costume.
Cheap shirts.
Old shoes.
A faded tie he wore when he wanted her sympathy.
Behind Ava’s side sat a plastic storage box.
She pulled it out and placed it on the bed.
Receipts.
Bank statements.
Transfer confirmations.
Pawn shop paperwork.
The receipt for her mother’s necklace.
Ava held that one longest.
Nathan had kissed her forehead when she sold it.
“One day, I will give you everything,” he had said.
He already had everything.
He simply wanted hers too.
Ava placed every document into a canvas bag.
Then she opened her laptop.
She searched for Elena Ward, the divorce lawyer her coworker once mentioned in a whisper.
Ava had thought she would never need the name.
Now it felt like a door.
She wrote one message.
My husband lied about his finances for our entire marriage.
She attached the photo from the club.
Then the recording.
Then the first page of transfers.
Her hand hovered over the final line.
She typed it slowly.
I need to leave before he wakes up.
Ava hit send.
The apartment was quiet except for the leaking ceiling.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Five years of patience had sounded exactly like that.
She opened a suitcase.
For the first time, she packed only for herself.