My thoughts keep circling back to Marge and Ree.
They don’t try to solve it for me. They don’t overwhelm me with instructions or force anything into place. When we meet the next day, Ree simply hands me a notebook.
Inside it, her handwriting is neat, deliberate. There are practical questions laid out like stepping stones through chaos:
Where can I stay?
Who can I call?
What do I need to take?
What documentation do I need?
What would make me go back?
Every lunchtime, we meet in Marge’s room, tucked away from curious eyes and easy questions. I sit beside her while she spreads a map across her lap. Her finger moves slowly over the paper, stopping at a place she knows by heart.
Campbell River.
She talks about it like she’s still there sometimes. Not just a place, but a beginning. Where she grew up. Where she met her husband. Where her life became something else entirely. A place she calls safe.
The more I look at it, the more it stops feeling like a drawing on paper and starts feeling… possible. Real. Like the only point on the map that doesn’t shift when I look away. And it feels distant enough to breathe in. Far enough that he wouldn’t find me.
“That’s where I found my life,” Marge says quietly, watching me instead of the map. “Maybe you’ll find yours too.”
At the end of my shift, I go home with something unfamiliar forming in my chest.
A plan.
Small at first. Fragile, but steady enough that I can’t ignore it anymore. A faint warmth flickers in my chest, small but real. Hope feels dangerous, but it’s the first thing that hasn’t hurt in a long time.
I have a little cash saved. Not much, but enough to begin. I can get more with the groceries. Small withdrawals, nothing obvious. If I do it carefully, he won’t notice. I can hide it, tucking it away where it can’t be seen or taken.
I’ll need my passport. My documents. Things I’ve never been allowed to think about as “mine” before. I can move a bag out quietly, leaving it with Ree, or maybe Marge. Somewhere it won’t be questioned.
Ree gave me her number. I’ve saved it underNurse Gale – new staff,a quiet joke to myself, an escape route disguised as normal life.
I keep running through it. Over and over. Adjusting, recalculating, replaying every detail until it starts to feel likesomething I could actually survive. Until it feels like something that might work.
* * *
One month later.
I get up and move through my routine like nothing is wrong. Like I am normal. Like we are normal.
For the past month, that’s what we’ve been: a convincing illusion of a couple. Behind closed doors, he has broken me in every way that matters, and still I have continued to smile on command, breathed through it, and waited for the moment I can finally leave.
I’ve saved more money now. My documents and escape bag are already at Marge’s house. I haven’t bought the bus ticket yet, but I will when I get there.
I find Adrian in the kitchen, coffee in hand.
“I’m heading to work,” I say, leaning in to kiss his cheek. I fill my to-go cup while he watches me.
“Dinner tonight,” he says without looking away from me. “Down at the waterfront, at that new restaurant. Six o’clock. Don’t be late.”
I smile like it’s nothing. “That sounds really nice. I’ve heard good things about that place.”
I kiss his cheek again and turn toward the door.
