Chapter 3 - The Cold Walkout
The biting December wind hit us like a physical slap the moment I shoved open the heavy oak front door. Snow was coming down in thick, blinding sheets, blanketing the long circular driveway of the Prescott estate in pristine white.
Behind us, the door flew open again, throwing a harsh rectangle of interior light across the drifts.
“Nora! Wait! Dammit, Nora, stop!”
Ethan came stumbling out into the cold without a coat, his dress shoes slipping on the ice-covered limestone steps. His breath plumed white in the freezing air, his face contorted in desperation.
“Nora, don’t do this on Christmas! The roads are treacherous!”
I didn’t stop. I kept my grip tight on Mia’s mitten, guiding her quickly down the shoveled walkway toward my Honda Pilot parked near the gate. Noah walked on Mia’s other side, placing his body between his sister and the wind, his jaw set in stone.
“Get back inside, Ethan,” I said without looking back.
He caught up to us near the rear bumper of my car, reaching out to grab my arm. The moment his fingers brushed the wool of my sleeve, Noah spun around and shoved Ethan’s chest with both hands.
Ethan stumbled back, his eyes wide with shock. “Noah! What is wrong with you? I am your father!”
“Don’t touch her!” Noah shouted over the howl of the wind. Snow was collecting on his dark hair, his cheeks bright red from the cold. “You don’t get to touch her, and you don’t get to talk to us! You knew! You had that test on Thursday!”
Ethan looked at his son, panting, shivering violently in his thin cotton dress shirt. “Noah... you don’t understand how complicated it was. Your grandmother was threatening to cut off my partnership buy-in at the firm. She told me she had proof your mother was meeting Mark Harris at the downtown hotel. I had to know for sure before I confronted her!”
A harsh, bitter laugh tore out of my throat as I unlocked the car and lifted Mia into her booster seat. Mia’s little arms wrapped tightly around my neck, her tears finally spilling over, hot against my freezing cheek.
“Mommy, is Daddy mad at me?” she sobbed quietly into my collar.
“No, sweetheart,” I whispered, kissing her temple, my heart breaking into jagged pieces. “Daddy isn’t mad at you. Daddy just doesn’t know how to be a man.”
I buckled her harness, slammed the rear door, and turned around to face my husband of fifteen years.
“Mark Harris?” I asked, stepping toward him until we were inches apart in the swirling blizzard. “My principal? The sixty-four-year-old grandfather of four who helped me coordinate the district literacy fundraiser at the convention center hotel last month? That’s who Linda told you I was sleeping with?”
Ethan swallowed hard, his lips turning faintly blue. “She... she had photos of you two in the lobby. She said someone saw you checking into an elevator together.”
“And you believed her?” I hissed, the tears finally burning behind my eyelids. “Instead of asking your wife, instead of trusting the woman who has stood by you through two failed business ventures, your depression, and your mother’s relentless cruelty... you went behind my back, swabbed our six-year-old daughter’s mouth while she was sleeping, and sent it to a lab?”
“I was terrified, Nora!” Ethan pleaded, tears welling in his own eyes. “I love you! I love Mia! But my mother... she kept showing me things, kept telling me people were laughing at me at the club... she got inside my head!”
“She’s been inside your head your entire life,” Noah said coldly from the passenger door. “And you let her stay there.”
“Nora, please,” Ethan begged, reaching out with both hands, his fingers trembling from the freezing cold. “Don’t leave. Come back inside. Gordon is kicking Paige and Mom out of the living room right now. We can stay in the guest wing. We can fix this tomorrow.”
“There is no tomorrow with you, Ethan,” I said. The realization washed over me not with sadness, but with an immense, terrifying clarity. “A man who lets his mother spit poison in his six-year-old daughter’s face to protect an inheritance isn't a husband. He’s an accomplice.”
I opened the driver’s side door and climbed in. Noah hopped into the front seat beside me, slamming his door shut.
Ethan ran to my window, banging his palms against the glass as I hit the ignition. The engine roared to life, the dashboard glowing in the dark interior.
“Nora! Don’t do this! You have nowhere to go in this storm!” he yelled through the glass, his face twisted in panic. “Nora!”
I shifted the Pilot into reverse, turned the wheel, and backed out of the space without looking at him again. In the rearview mirror, through the sweep of the rear wiper, I saw Ethan Prescott standing in the middle of his mother’s manicured snowdrifts, shivering in his holiday clothes, shrinking until he disappeared into the whiteout behind us.
The car was silent except for the low hum of the heater and Mia’s soft, hitching breaths from the back seat.
“Mom?” Noah asked quietly after we cleared the iron gates of the estate and turned onto the deserted, snow-covered county road.
“Yeah, honey?”
“Are we going home?”
I gripped the steering wheel, my knuckles aching. Our home—the suburban house in Concord with the mortgage Linda had co-signed on, the house filled with Linda’s hand-me-down furniture and constant, unannounced visits.
May you like
“No,” I told him, looking into the rearview mirror at Mia, who was clutching her ruined gift bag against her chest. “We’re not going there tonight. We’re going somewhere safe.”
---
