Freeing, because it turned out I had never actually been trapped in the way I believed; the money under my maiden name had been growing for six years, the exit had been quietly built, the capacity to leave had existed long before I used it.

And painful, for the same reason, because it meant that the years I spent believing I had no choice were, at least in part, years I chose.

Not the cruelty — that was Julian’s, entirely.

But the staying.

The staying was mine.

I had told myself a story in which I was helpless, in which there was nothing to be done, in which a woman in my position had to endure — and the story was false, and some part of me had known it was false the whole time, because that same part had been building the door.