Before I could answer, Robert laughed.
“Travel? With what money? She’s never earned a dollar in her life!”
Then he turned toward me.
“You should be grateful I kept you all these years. Without me, you’d have nothing.”
That night, I couldn’t sleep.
I sat in our dark kitchen, staring at the family photographs on the wall.
Thirty-eight years of marriage. Two children. Thousands of meals. Countless sacrifices.
And somehow, at sixty, I had become invisible in my own home.
The next morning, Robert complained that his breakfast was five minutes late.
“Honestly, Margaret, you can’t even do the one thing you’re supposed to do!”
For the first time, I didn’t apologize.
I simply looked at him and smiled.
After he left for work, I opened the bedroom closet and took out the old blue suitcase I hadn’t used in seventeen years.
I packed my clothes, picked up my handbag, and walked toward the front door.