“I will be out in thirty minutes,” I said.
I left the study and walked up the grand staircase one last time, my hand trailing along the bannister I had polished with my own hands when the staff was overwhelmed.
I went to what had been our bedroom, though Julian had not slept there in over a year.
He preferred his suite in the east wing, far from me.
I did not touch the designer gowns hanging in the walk-in closet, clothes Arthur had bought to make me look presentable at charity functions.
I did not take the diamonds or the pearls or any of the jewelry that came with being a Sterling wife.
I reached into the very back of the closet and pulled out the beat-up suitcase I had arrived with three years ago.
The same suitcase I had used in college, covered in stickers from places I had never been but dreamed of visiting.
I stripped off the expensive silk dress I was wearing and pulled on my old jeans and a white t-shirt.
Clothes that were mine, bought with money I had earned, worn thin from actual life.
As I zipped the suitcase closed, the weight that had been sitting on my chest for three years finally lifted.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
It was the Sterling family lawyer, a man named Robert who had always looked at me with thinly veiled distaste.
“Ms. Vance, the CEO wants to confirm you have signed the papers?”
“It is done,” I said, my voice steady. “Tell him he got exactly what he paid for.”
I walked down the stairs for the last time.
The living room was empty. They did not even bother to watch me leave.
Perfect.
I walked out the front door of the Sterling Estate, pulling my suitcase behind me.
The night air was cold and clean, washing away three years of suffocation.
I hailed a car using an app on my phone. I did not go to my parents. I did not want them to see me like this, broken and discarded.
They had warned me about marrying into money. They had told me the Sterlings would never accept a girl from Queens whose father taught high school history.
I had told them love was enough.
I had been so young. So stupid.
I checked into a hotel under my maiden name, Nora Vance, and lay in the clean, impersonal bed, staring at the ceiling.
For the first time in three years, I was alone.
For the first time in three years, I could breathe.
The next morning, I woke up nauseated and dizzy.
I had been feeling off for weeks, attributing it to stress, to the constant tension of living in that house.
But something told me to go to a clinic.
I sat in the waiting room, filling out forms under my maiden name, surrounded by other women in various stages of life.
When they called me back, the doctor was a kind woman in her fifties with gentle hands and a no-nonsense demeanor.
She did the examination, then the ultrasound, her eyes widening as she moved the wand across my stomach.
“Ms. Vance,” she said slowly, “when was your last period?”
I told her. She nodded, her eyes still on the screen.
“I need you to stay calm,” she said, “because what I am about to tell you is extremely rare.”
My heart started pounding.
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