Page 55 of Wreckage and Rain

"No. I want to be alone for this."

"Call me when you're done."

"I will."

"Summer."

"Yeah."

"You aren't crazy. You aren't reading too much into anything. They are exactly what they look like."

"I've been so stupid Autumn. I'm just done."

I drive the rest of the way to Charleston in silence. I don't listen to anything. I don't roll down the windows. The marsh is dark. The jasmine is in the vents. I need to get a plan together.

I drive home.

***

The house is dark.

His car isn't in the driveway.

I sit in mine for a minute. Long enough to know that I am alone in this. That whatever I do in this house in the next thirty minutes, I will be doing without him there to interrupt, apologize, beg or charm me out of it. He hasn't even come home yet.

He is probably still wherever the limousine took him.

I get out of the car. I unlock the door. I go inside.

***

I go upstairs and get the suitcase down and I start throwing things in it.

I'm not folding anything. I take fistfuls out of drawers and shove them down and when the lid won't close I put my knee on it andforce it. The cocktail dresses stay on their hangers. I don't need to look brave for anybody anymore. Cheyenne can do that now.

Laptop. Hard drive. The first edition Jake gave me. The notebook. I grab it and shove it in with the rest. I'll deal with what that means later. I'm not leaving one single thing in this house that he gets to hold and feel warm about.

I'm moving fast. If it's mine and it's in reach it goes in the bag, and if I have to think about it for longer than a second I leave it, because I am not spending one more minute of my life standing in this bedroom deciding what I'm owed.

Then I see the photographs on the dresser and I stop.

I want to put my fist through every one of them. I want him to come home to broken glass. And that is exactly why I don't, because broken glass is something he could tell himself a story about. Crazy. Emotional. She lost it. He doesn't get that. He gets to come home to a room where nothing is wrong except that I'm not in it.

So I slow down.

I take them off the dresser. The wedding portrait. The one at King's Diner where I'm laughing so hard I look like I'm crying. The beach trip with the stupid hat. I lay them face down in the wastebasket, frames intact, and they don't get to watch me do the rest of this.

I sit at the dresser.

I take off my engagement ring and then my wedding band and I set them next to each other where he'll see them.

I find my yellow legal pad and tear off the top sheet.

I write three sentences.

Guess I got my answer.

My lawyer will be in touch.