Chapter 5
A tear slipped down my cheek.
I wiped it away.
“I have spent ten years caring, Vincent.”
I looked directly at him.
“I’m exhausted.”
He stood there without speaking.
For once, there was no argument waiting behind his eyes.
I sat down again.
I signed the agreement where the pages required my signature, pausing only long enough to make sure the names and spaces were correct.
My hand remained steady.
When I finished, I placed the pen on the table.
“There.”
Vincent stared at the papers.
He looked almost offended.
Not because I had said something cruel.
Because I had done exactly what he asked.
“You should have an attorney review this,” he said.
“I will have someone review the copies.”
“Then you shouldn’t have signed tonight.”
“You brought the papers tonight.”
He had no answer.
I stood.
“I’ll leave tomorrow.”
His head snapped up.
“This is your home.”
I looked around the room one last time.
The white marble.
The towering windows.
The chairs no one sat in.
The expensive art I had never chosen.
“No, Vincent.”
My voice was almost gentle.
“This was your home.”
I walked toward the doorway.
“I was just very good at living in it.”
“Mara.”
I stopped.
He looked at me.
For one second, I saw the man I had loved before he became a stranger in our marriage.
“I never meant to hurt you.”
I held his gaze.
“That sentence is going to haunt you someday.”
Then I walked upstairs.
I packed two suitcases.
Only two.
Ten years in a seventeen-room estate, and the belongings I truly wanted fit into two suitcases.
I took my clothes.
My mother’s earrings.
A few photographs.
A box of letters from medical school.
And a worn copy of Gray’s Anatomy filled with my old notes.
At the bottom of my closet, behind evening gowns and designer handbags I hadn’t worn in years, I found my old leather medical bag.
I sat on the floor holding it.
The leather had cracked near the handle.
Inside were bandage scissors, a penlight, several outdated instruments, and my old hospital identification badge.
I pulled out a photograph.
In it, I was standing beside three exhausted colleagues in the trauma department.
My hair was a mess.
My scrubs were wrinkled.
There were dark circles under my eyes.
And I was smiling.
Not the polite smile I had learned to wear at Vincent’s charity galas.