Chapter 5 - The Ashes of Preston Hollow
I didn't sleep in our marital bed that night. Instead, I spent the hours between midnight and dawn in the guest room, packing my remaining personal belongings into two sleek leather suitcases.
Outside, I could hear Jack pacing the front porch, occasionally sobbing or banging his fists weakly against the heavy oak door before collapsing back into silence.
He finally stopped around 4:00 AM.
When the first pale streaks of dawn cut through the autumn horizon, I walked out of the bedroom, carrying my bags down the grand staircase. The house was dead silent. As I passed Jack’s home office, I noticed the door was cracked open.
I paused and pushed it further open.
Jack was slumped over his mahogany desk, fast asleep in his leather chair, still wearing his ruined sport coat, surrounded by empty coffee cups and scattered medical bills. He looked smaller somehow. Stripped of his titles, his status, his money, and his arrogant swagger, he was just a miserable, broken man who had gambled everything on his own greed and lost.
I didn't feel a shred of pity. I didn't feel anger, either.
Just a profound, liberating emptiness. The debt was settled. The balance sheet of my life had been wiped clean.
I walked out to the front foyer, set my bags down by the door, and placed my house key neatly on the silver entry bowl.
As I opened the front door and stepped out into the crisp morning air, a sleek black town car pulled quietly to the curb. The rear door swung open, and Gerald stepped out, holding an umbrella over his head to shield me from the lingering morning drizzle.
"Good morning, Megan," Gerald said, offering a warm, respectful smile. "Are you ready?"
"More than ready, Gerald," I replied, sliding into the plush leather interior of the car.
As the town car pulled away from the curb, I looked back through the rear window one last time.
Jack was stumbling out onto the front porch, rubbing his eyes against the morning light, squinting blindly down the driveway as he realized the car—and I—were finally gone.
He opened his mouth to shout something, but the distance swallowed his voice completely.
May you like
The car turned the corner, leaving Preston Hollow, Jack, and the last ten years of my life fading rapidly in the rearview mirror.
Ahead of us lay the open highway, a blank page waiting to be written, and a future where I would never, ever play a supporting role in someone else’s selfish story again.
