My mom had introduced me to him when she was in the hospital towards the end of her life. Stage IV brain cancer had taken both of us by surprise, and she had to rush to get all of her affairs in order.
Mike had been her lawyer and the executor of her estate.
Funny, charming, and most importantly supportive, Mike had been with me every step of the way. Through my mom’s hospice stay and her subsequent funeral.
He’d even beaten off the relatives that came out of the woodwork to try and claim some part of my mother’s estate. The ones that hadn’t spoken with her in over thirty years.
As I dug into the bed of the rose garden with my bare hands, I could still remember how safe he made me feel and how easy it had been to say yes to his proposal.
How stupid twenty-two-year-old me had been.
Mike’s control had started not long after we eloped in Vegas and eventually celebrated with a lavish ceremony in his home state of New Hampshire. I was supposed to return to college to finish my degree that Fall, but he convinced me to wait a bit until all of the issues with my mom’s estate were settled.
So I did.
But then he bought our first home and I was so busy decorating and furnishing it that college was the last thing on my mind as I learned how to be a good housewife.
Mike was particular about nearly everything. From the thread count of his sheets to the way he liked his food cooked.
When I did things correctly he was sweet and affectionate, showering me with praise.
When things went wrong, however?
It was like living with a stranger.
At first, he would ignore me for days. Looking right through me as he ate the food I cooked and sat in the house I cleaned.
Then things slowly got worse.
The friends I made during my college days used to call and text often, sharing whatever memes or gossip that they heard about other people at our school. Those stopped out of the blue and all of my texts were left on read.
Mike had held me while I cried in his arms about losing all of my friends. He’d soothed away all of my worries and told me I would make new friends.
Then there was his mother, his only surviving parent. She lived just across town, but that didn’t stop her from showing up to the house nearly every day while Mike was at the office.
My mom had been a soft and warm hippy, preferring to spend her days throwing pottery and painting. Lily Campbell was the opposite. She spent half of her time at the local country club with her friends, and the other half was spent criticizing my every move.
She didn’t like my red hair, the way I cleaned and cooked, and she really didn’t like having to share her son’s attention.
After nearly three years of that, I finally snapped at her to leave me the hell alone.
That was the first time Mike ever hit me. The sharp crack across my face changed our dynamic forever.
Four years in, and I was a shell of myself. That was, at least, until my closest friend from college, Wendy, came back into my life.
Apparently, Mike had blocked their numbers on my phone and changed their contacts to his number. He read all of my pleas for them to respond to me and had let me believe that my friends were willingly ignoring me.
Wendy somehow managed to find out where I lived and snuck up on me at the grocery store. She wanted me to leave with her right there and then, but I didn’t have the courage to even try at the time.
We agreed to meet every couple of months when I was doing the food shopping and she would slip me any extra cash she had.
My final straw had been Mike talking about having kids. I’d been on birth control since I was sixteen to help with my periods, but one night Mike dumped my pills down the sink and announced that it was time to start trying for a baby.
This was after he’d put bruises on my ribs and legs because I’d failed to get his clothing from the dry cleaners due to a storm making it unsafe for me to drive.
I realized in that moment that, while I wanted children, I definitely did not want to have them with him.
That epiphany finally put the ball of my escape into motion. Over the next year I squirreled away as much money as I could, burying it all in plastic baggies in the garden.
