Adrian’s lawyer called me two days after I came home.
Except I did not come home. Home was gone.
I had known, somewhere beneath the shock, that the house would be the first move. Adrian was methodical in his cruelties. He had transferred the property to Celeste Monroe’s name eleven days before he walked into my hospital room. He had spoken to his lawyers before he watched me push three children into the world.
He had planned the exit while I was still in labor.
I did not go to that house. I went to my parents’ estate instead, through the iron gate and the long gravel drive lined with old oak trees that had outlasted three generations of Hargroves and would outlast three more.
My mother met me at the door. She did not say I told you so. She simply took Samuel from my arms and walked inside, and that silence was more comfort than anything she could have spoken.
