It was a sentence I needed to say out loud, so that it would be real, so that I would remember, later, exactly what kind of man I had spent eleven years making myself small for, exactly what he had been willing to do, and where, and in front of whom.

He had not just decided to leave me.

He had decided to do it as publicly and as cruelly as possible, on a porch, with a mistress and a set of packed bags, in front of an eight-year-old and a five-year-old, because he believed he held all the power, and a man who believes he holds all the power stops bothering to hide what he is.

Chapter 5 — No Room for a Leech