He called my existence a ‘little life,’ and said I was flexible enough to wait.
Cassian Gallagher needed a wife for his political ascent. I was the librarian from his hometown. He got the charming backstory; I got a husband who spent more time mentoring his ambitious intern, Tallulah Hayes, than he did looking at me. He was never unfaithful. He just gave her the time, the attention, the belief that should have been mine. He cancelled our third anniversary trip to help her prepare for a major presentation.
“You understand, Arden,” he’d said. “Your schedule is so much more… accommodating.”
The day I left, I didn’t take much. Just my grandmother’s ring, which I left on the granite countertop. He never knew I wasn’t just a librarian. That for years, as Thalia, I’d built a life he never saw. A life where I was celebrated, not tolerated.
His reckoning came six weeks later, not from my absence, but from Tallulah’s gushing praise. She’d finally secured a piece for his campaign office by the elusive artist ‘Thalia,’ known for the distinctive port-wine stain she incorporated into her portraits. He stood in the gallery, staring at a painting of himself titled 'The Blind Man.' He saw my paintings on those walls. He saw the woman he’d erased.
Did he think my not speaking meant I had no opinions?
Or that I would always be in the house when he came home?
