And then I had put the ending in a safe and gone home and kept paying the allowance and kept absorbing the insults, because a signed document is one thing and the courage to use it is another entirely.

I had told myself I was being patient.

I had told myself I was protecting my parents from the embarrassment of a failed marriage, as though their embarrassment were a heavier thing than my own safety.

I had told myself a hundred careful stories, and every one of them was a way of not doing the thing I already knew I had to do.

The truth was simpler and uglier: I was afraid.

Not of Craig, exactly, though I should have been.