Chapter 4 - The Chestnut Hill Sanctuary
By noon, we were gone.
I didn't yell at Caleb when I left. I didn't slam the front door. I simply walked out to Chloe’s SUV carrying Grace in her carrier while Chloe loaded our bags into the trunk. Caleb stood on the porch like a ghost haunting an empty estate, watching us drive away without uttering a single word of protest. He knew he had forfeited the right to argue.
Chloe’s house in Chestnut Hill was an old, beautiful stone colonial surrounded by towering maple trees. It smelled like cedar, fresh coffee, and lavender.
Within two hours, Chloe had set up a proper recovery station in her downstairs guest suite—complete with a comfortable recliner, clean white sheets, a rolling cart stocked with water bottles, snacks, and medical supplies, and a bassinet positioned right beside the bed.
“See?” Chloe said, fluffing my pillows with brisk efficiency. “Is this really so hard? Is it really that difficult to understand that a woman who just had her abdomen cut open needs a flat surface, a clean room, and zero testosterone within a five-mile radius?”
I lay down on the crisp cotton sheets, letting out a long, shuddering sigh as my muscles finally began to uncoil from their three-day state of hyper-vigilance.
“Thank you, Clo,” I whispered, closing my eyes.
“Don't thank me yet,” she said, pulling the duvet over my legs. “Your phone has buzzed fourteen times in the last ten minutes. I checked it. It’s Caleb. And three of those texts are from your mother-in-law.”
My eyes snapped open. “Sherry?”
“Oh, yeah. She’s furious.” Chloe tossed my phone onto the bedside table, screen down. “Apparently, according to her text messages, you are 'tearing a good Christian family apart,' you 'maliciously humiliated her husband in public,' and you 'refuse to accept the traditional joy of a newborn arrival.' I was tempted to text her back a photo of your incision staples, but I figured it was too high-brow for her.”
A humorless smile touched my lips. “What did Caleb say?”
“Caleb is begging you to come home, promising that his parents have gone back to Knoxville—which is a lie, because I saw their Buick parked outside the local diner when we drove through town—and swearing on his life that his dad will never cross our threshold again.”
“He can’t keep that promise,” I murmured, staring up at the plaster ceiling molding. “As long as Ron is alive, Ron is going to be the invisible third partner in our marriage. Caleb has spent thirty-two years being trained to absorb his father’s abuse and call it ‘family love.’”
Chloe pulled a chair up beside the bed and sat down, her expression turning serious. “So what are you going to do, Erin? You can’t stay at my house forever. Well, you can, but eventually, your husband is going to need to figure out whether he’s married to you or joined at the hip to his father.”
“I’m not going back until there are boundaries,” I said slowly, the shape of my decision crystallizing in my mind with terrifying clarity. “Real boundaries. Not just Caleb whispering ‘please don’t’ while his dad rolls over us like a tank.”
“What kind of boundaries?”
“Professional ones,” I said softly. “Couples counseling. And an ironclad agreement that Ron and Sherry are not welcome in our home without a formal, written invitation sent at least a week in advance—an invitation that I approve, not Caleb.”
Chloe raised an eyebrow. “Do you think Caleb has the spine to enforce that?”
May you like
I stared at the white linen curtains fluttering gently in the breeze from the open window.
“Find out,” I said quietly, “is exactly what we’re about to test.”
