When the card was declined at a gas station, he called me furious.
“You embarrassed me in front of everyone.”
“Then pay for gas yourself.”
“You’re obsessed with money.”
“No. I’m the one earning it.”
After that, everything became worse.
Margaret started calling constantly.
Her back hurt.
Her water heater made strange noises.
Her kitchen faucet dripped.
One evening, she asked me to drive across town and mop her bathroom because a plumber had supposedly left “a disaster.”
I said no.
Two weeks later, I returned from work a little before nine and found Margaret stretched across my sofa.
Her feet were wrapped in a blanket and resting on my marble coffee table.
“My mom’s blood pressure went up,” Ethan announced. “She’s staying here for a few days. She’ll sleep in our bedroom.”
“Her condo is twenty minutes away.”
Margaret sighed heavily.
“If I’m such a burden, I suppose I can just go home and die alone.”
“Rachel, make her some tea,” Ethan ordered. “And wipe down the hallway. Mom spilled her herbal drops.”
“Do it yourself.”
He looked at me as though I had insulted him.
“What did you say?”
“I said I’m not your maid. And I’m not your mother’s maid either.”
That was when he said the sentence that finished breaking something that had already been cracking for months.
“Either you go over there right now and clean my mother’s condo so she can return comfortably, or tomorrow I’m asking you for a divorce.”
I stared at him.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then I smiled.
“Fine. Give me the keys.”
Ethan smiled too, convinced he had won.
“That’s better. It’s about time you understood how marriage works.”
I took the keys and walked out.
He believed he had finally forced me into submission.
He had no idea what I was about to find inside his mother’s condo.
Margaret’s condo did not look like the home of an elderly woman too weak to bend over and wipe a bathroom floor.
It looked like a professionally staged rental.
The walls had just been painted.
The hardwood floors gleamed.
The bathroom was spotless.
There was no leaking faucet.
No plumbing disaster.
No mess.
On the dining table sat brochures from a real estate company.
Then the doorbell rang.
A woman stood outside wearing a company badge and holding a tablet.
“Good evening. I’m Melissa with North Shore Realty. I’m here for the final listing photographs. Has Mrs. Margaret finished moving out?”
My stomach tightened.
“Moving out?”
The agent looked confused.
“She told us she was moving in with her son indefinitely. The condo is already reserved. The tenants take possession Monday.”
