Oh, David Nichols, from Nichols Realty, how dare she?
She wanted to laugh at him, except she was so mad.
“How dare I what? You said you wanted me to leave.”
“I said I wanted you to be back with me,” he said.
Pure, righteous fury filled her, a fire that had been kindling inside her for a while now igniting.
She didn’t want to be beholden to this man anymore. He didn’t own her. He didn’t get to make choices for her.
She was going to be happier than David had allowed her to be.
She was going to have a whole life—goals, dreams, feelings, mistakes, and joy—that David hadn’t allowed her to have.
She was going to stand apart from him and be her own person.
She’d been created to be whole, not to be his.
She’d never felt more certain of God’s love for her, or of her own love for herself.
“That isn’t acceptable to me,” she said. “I’m not getting back with you. Not after—”
“Because of atext?” he asked.
“No. Because of so much more than a text. Because you don’t respect me. Because you don’t love me, not the way I deserve. And because you threw a giant, embarrassing tantrum at our sons’ baseball game, which told me exactly who you really are. A selfish baby who claims to be the head of the household just because he’s a man.”
“We can talk about it,” he said. “It isn’t like I cheated on you. It was only a text.”
“Was it?”
The discomfort and fury on his face told her it wasn’t. It wouldn’t have mattered, though. He’d exposed himself. He wasn’t the man she’dbelieved him to be, and this wasn’t the congregation she’d believed it to be. It wasn’t the faith she had. Hers was leading her in a different direction, and they might think that meant she was abandoning it, but that wasn’t true.
Perhaps most important of all, she wasn’t the woman she’d thought she was.
She was stronger. She was clear on her own convictions. They wouldn’t waver, even when her husband asked her to compromise them.
“David, what you did to me was wrong. But you can’t even admit it. Instead, you’re threatening me. Instead, you’re sending people to talk to me, to emotionally manipulate me by questioning my faith. Butyouaren’t talking to me. Not really. For weeks, we were separated and went to church together, but you didn’t talk to me. You only sat with me to keep up appearances. It was about you, not about us. Our sons won’t speak to me. That’s because of you. But I’m not the one who betrayed our marriage vows.”
His expression contorted, confusion, anger, and rejection warring on his face. He couldn’t handle her changing his story. Couldn’t handle her calling him out—rightly—as the villain, because he saw himself as the hero. As the wounded party.
Right then, she saw the fatal flaw in their marriage. In how it had been constructed from the beginning.
He saw himself as the one who mattered. Everyone else existed to support his view of himself, his own comfort, his own supremacy.
A lot of people went to this same church, had marriages that were structured like theirs, but crucially: The men wanted their wives to be happy.
They loved them.
David loved himself.
“You’re going to pay for this,” he said. “That car you drove here in, that’s mine too. All of it is mine. You haven’t earned a single cent the entire time we’ve been together.”
“I got a job. I got a place to stay. So it seems like I’m doing okay.”
He needed her to need him. Without it, he had no power.
She had taken his power. She had given it all to herself.
