“I am starting the legal process to divide the property today,” he announced. “You will never touch another item belonging to my wife or daughter.”
Edith looked as if she had been slapped across the face. “Are you kicking your own mother out?”
“No, I am setting the boundary I should have set years ago,” Wesley replied. “I am leaving tonight, and you are finished making decisions for me.”
Edith’s brother tried to calm the situation, but the damage was irreversible. Edith shouted that Wesley would regret choosing a “stranger” over his mother.
“No,” Wesley said while walking toward the door. “You are the one who lost me.”
That night, with Simon’s help, Wesley moved everything out of the house. He packed the clothes, the documents, and the small pieces of the crib that weren’t broken.
When he saw the empty drawer where the baby’s first shoes used to be, he felt a wave of crushing guilt. He realized that his mother hadn’t changed overnight; she had always been this way.
He had simply become so used to giving in that he didn’t see when his silence became a weapon against his wife. He returned to Jenna’s apartment just as the sun was beginning to rise.