Chapter 6
After I shut him down, David totally snapped.
He dropped all pretense of civility and began a campaign of domestic terrorism. He would blast the TV when I was trying to read. He left the bathroom a swamp with wet towels on the floor. The faucet dripped, and toothpaste was smeared on the mirror.
He even started staying out all night, a pathetic attempt to show me how much he didn't need me.
I ignored it all.
He could throw his tantrums. I would live my life. He trashed the living room, so I stayed in my bedroom. He blasted his music, so I put on my noise-canceling headphones.
He stayed out all night, so I slept more peacefully, not even bothering to lock the door.
My calm indifference was like punching a pillow. All his rage had nowhere to go, leaving him to stew in his own toxic frustration.
Meanwhile, Eric's loan sharks were getting tired of waiting.
First, it was a constant barrage of calls to David's cell. Then they started calling the house landline. And then, one morning, we woke up to find "Eric Warren pays his debts" scrawled in angry red spray paint on our front door.
The neighbors started whispering. Their glances in the hallway turned from curiosity to suspicion and pity.
David, the retired "manager" who valued his reputation above all else, was finally starting to crack.
One night, he stumbled home, reeking of cheap whiskey, and kicked my bedroom door open.
"Emily!" he slurred, his eyes bloodshot as he pointed a wavering finger at me. "This is all your fault! You're too cruel! If you had just agreed to mortgage the house, none of this would be happening! You've ruined our good name!"
I was in the middle of applying a face mask, and he startled me. I slowly sat up, peeled the cool sheet from my face, and stared at him.
"Let's be very clear, David. The one who owes the money is your brother. The one who is ruining the family name is you. This has absolutely nothing to do with me."
"How dare you!" He lunged at me, his hand clamping around my wrist like a vice. "I'm telling you, you're going to agree! You're going to give me that deed, one way or another!"
His grip was brutal, sending a shock of pain up my arm.
I struggled, but he was too strong. We had been married for thirty years, and for the first time, he had laid a hand on me in violence.
In that instant, my heart, which had been slowly freezing, finally shattered into a million pieces of ice.
"David, let go of me," I ordered. "You let go right now, or I'm calling the police."
"The police?" he laughed, scoffing. "Go ahead! What are they going to do? It's a domestic dispute! Is it a crime for a man to want to take out a loan on his own house?"
"This is assault!" I spat back.
"I didn't hit you! I'm just trying to 'negotiate'!" he snarled, his face inches from mine, his breath sour with booze. "Emily, this is your last chance. Give me the deed, and we can go back to normal.
"If you don't, we're getting a divorce! A divorce! And I'll make sure you walk away with nothing!"
Walk away with nothing?
Hearing those words, I stopped struggling. Something inside me clicked into place. All the fear just vanished. I looked him dead in the eye. "Are you sure that's what you want, David? A divorce?"
My sudden calm threw him.
"What? Scared now?" he sneered, regaining his swagger. "If you're scared, then give me the deed!"
"Okay," I said with a simple nod. "Let's get a divorce."
This time, it was his turn to be stunned. He stared at me as if I had grown a second head.
"What did you just say?" He stuttered.
"I said, let's get a divorce," I repeated slowly. "You want me to walk away with nothing? Fine. We can go to the courthouse tomorrow. But first, we're going to have a little chat about our assets."
I yanked my arm free from his loosened grip, walked into my study, and unlocked a drawer in my desk. I pulled out a thick folder.
Returning to the bedroom, I slapped the folder down on the dresser in front of him with a bang.
"You want to settle the accounts? Fine. Let's settle them."
I opened the folder. First, I took out the deed to the house we were standing in and set it aside.
Then, I pulled out three more deeds and laid them out in a neat row in front of him, like a winning poker hand.
"This one," I said, tapping the first, "is a three-bedroom condo in Sunny Creek Estates. Currently valued at around one million dollars.
"This one is a two-bedroom in the Northgate school district. It's worth about $1.3 million. And this little one is a studio apartment downtown, overlooking the river. It currently rents for $700 a week."
His eyes grew wider, his jaw hanging open. He fumbled for the documents, flipping them over and over. On the owner line of each one, printed in clear, official lettering, was my name.
"This... this is impossible," he stammered, his voice trembling. "Where did you get the money for all this?"
"From my parents," I said evenly. "You knew they left me their old house. What you didn't know was that before they passed, their neighborhood was bought out by developers.
"They got three separate properties and a massive cash settlement. They were worried about you, David. They worried you'd take advantage of me.
"So they had it all legally notarized as my sole and separate property before we were ever married. It has nothing to do with you."
I watched his face drain of all color as I pulled out the next set of documents.
"Did you really think I was just a brainless housewife all these years? I sold my parents' old house a decade ago. That was my seed money.
"I used it, plus the settlement cash, to invest. The Northgate condo has been a rental property for years, bringing in a steady forty hundred dollars a month.
"I furnished the Sunny Creek condo and run it as a high-end Airbnb. On a good month, that brings in another three thousand dollars. The downtown studio pays for itself. All of it is my income."
I tossed a thick stack of bank statements and investment portfolio reports onto the pile.
"And this is the rest of it. My stocks and my mutual funds. All told, it's not a huge amount. Just a couple million.
"So, David. Do you still think I'm the one who needs you to survive?"
I looked him straight in the eye and asked, "Do you still want me to walk away with nothing?"
He crumpled to the floor as if his strings had been cut, the deeds fluttering around him. His eyes were vacant, his lips trembled, and he couldn't utter a single word.