His arrogance came roaring back up, because arrogance was the only structural element the man actually had, and he slammed his fist down on my mother’s table hard enough to rattle the coffee cups.
“You owe me this house!” he shouted.
“I gave twelve years to this family!
Twelve years!
I earned it!”
And that — that, finally — killed the last small thing in me that might have grieved him.
Because there it was, plain: he did not think of our marriage as a relationship that had failed.
He thought of it as a job he’d worked, and the house as a wage he was owed, and me as an expense he’d absorbed.
He had been running a tab in his head the whole time, twelve years of resentments logged as line items, and now he was presenting the invoice.
You cannot grieve a man who was only ever an invoice.
There was nothing there to mourn.
There never had been.
Otis gave him a simple choice: walk out now and wait for the warrant like a man, or get taken out of here in cuffs tonight in front of his wife and father-in-law.
Damian grabbed his jacket and went, and slammed the front door so hard the glass rattled in the frame, and I heard his truck start and tear out of the driveway into the rain.