Chapter 3: The Mask Off
Ethan’s friends began to reach out in the language of neutrality.
Both sides, they said. Pregnancy hormones. Margaret’s intense but she means well. I answered a few with a single sentence—He locked the door so his mother could take my card—and then stopped answering. People who needed more than that sentence were not safe around my child.
Priya filed for a temporary protective order on the basis of the assault and the confinement. Ethan contested in a written statement full of image-management. The bruise photos and the officer’s notes did not care about image. The order issued with distance requirements and a ban on contact through third parties. Margaret’s name sat on it beside his. For the first time in months I slept more than four hours.
The startup’s remaining employees—two of them—quit after a payroll bounce I refused to quietly catch. Ethan accused me of sabotage. I forwarded the accusation to Priya. Sabotage would have been continuing to fund a hole that had tried to swallow my PIN.
I walked through my house one evening and removed the small proofs of a shared future: his charger, a spare headset, a photo from a trip where I had paid for both tickets. Not in a rage pile. In a box by the door with his name on tape. When the order allowed a mediated exchange, the box would leave. Until then it could wait. My nursery corner stayed. The crib I had bought with agency profit stayed. The future that mattered had a heartbeat, not a florist’s invoice for imported orchids.
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