I thought the worst part of my divorce was finally behind me.<\/p>\n
Then I opened my front door.<\/p>\n
Water was running somewhere inside.<\/p>\n
Not a little leak.<\/p>\n
Not the slow drip of a faucet that hadn't been closed properly.<\/p>\n
It sounded like somebody had turned a tap all the way on and walked away.<\/p>\n
I stood there holding my key.<\/p>\n
For a few seconds, I couldn't make myself move.<\/p>\n
I knew Brian had been the last person in the house.<\/p>\n
And I knew he hadn't left willingly.<\/p>\n
\u201cBrian?\u201d<\/p>\n
I called his name into the hallway.<\/p>\n
Nobody answered.<\/p>\n
The water kept running.<\/p>\n
I should explain why I'd been afraid to come home in the first place.<\/p>\n
Brian and I had spent almost eight months fighting over our divorce.<\/p>\n
The house had become one of our biggest arguments.<\/p>\n
He wanted to sell it.<\/p>\n
I wanted to live there.<\/p>\n
Eventually, the judge decided that the house would belong to me.<\/p>\n
Brian was given fourteen days to move out.<\/p>\n
His last day had been Sunday.<\/p>\n
I waited until Monday to return.<\/p>\n
That extra day mattered to me.<\/p>\n
I couldn't bear the thought of arriving while he was still carrying boxes to his truck.<\/p>\n
I didn't want another argument.<\/p>\n
I didn't want another look from him.<\/p>\n
By the end of our marriage, he could make me feel unwelcome without saying anything at all.<\/p>\n
So I waited.<\/p>\n
And even after I drove there, I remained parked outside for twenty minutes.<\/p>\n
I watched the house through my windshield.<\/p>\n
Two stories.<\/p>\n
Pale yellow siding.<\/p>\n
White shutters.<\/p>\n
And the red front door I had insisted on years earlier.<\/p>\n
Brian hadn't wanted that color.<\/p>\n
He thought it was too bright.<\/p>\n
I told him I liked coming home to something cheerful.<\/p>\n
He painted it anyway.<\/p>\n
I remembered standing outside with him one Saturday, holding his ladder while we disagreed about which station to play on the radio.<\/p>\n
That was back when an argument over music could end with both of us laughing.<\/p>\n
We bought the house when we were twenty-nine.<\/p>\n
We'd already been married for two years.<\/p>\n
On the day we got the keys, we posed together on the front steps.<\/p>\n
Both of us were smiling.<\/p>\n
Both of us held a key toward the camera.<\/p>\n
I used to love that picture.<\/p>\n
By the time I returned that Monday, I didn't even know where it was.<\/p>\n
Somewhere among the boxes Brian had taken.<\/p>\n
Or thrown away.<\/p>\n
I had stopped asking.<\/p>\n
I finally got out of my car, walked to the porch, and unlocked the door.<\/p>\n
And there was that water.<\/p>\n
I stepped into the hallway.<\/p>\n
Brian had taken the furniture from the entrance.<\/p>\n
The little table was gone.<\/p>\n
So was the bench and the coat rack.<\/p>\n
Bare sections of wall showed where our framed pictures had hung.<\/p>\n
I'd expected the house to look empty.<\/p>\n
I hadn't expected it to smell wet.<\/p>\n
The air reminded me of the basement at my father's house after a heavy rain.<\/p>\n
I walked into the living room.<\/p>\n
That was where I saw the first hole.<\/p>\n
It was beside the fireplace.<\/p>\n
A rough opening had been driven straight through the drywall.<\/p>\n
Pieces of white plaster lay beneath it.<\/p>\n
I stared.<\/p>\n
At first, I tried to give it an innocent explanation.<\/p>\n
Maybe somebody had dropped furniture while moving.<\/p>\n
Maybe a cabinet had fallen against the wall.<\/p>\n
Accidents happened.<\/p>\n
I wanted it to be an accident.<\/p>\n
Then I saw the second hole.<\/p>\n
This one was beside the hallway.<\/p>\n
It was almost the same size.<\/p>\n
And it was high enough on the wall that I immediately thought of Brian.<\/p>\n
He was six feet tall.<\/p>\n
The damage sat roughly where his shoulder would be.<\/p>\n
I walked into the guest bedroom.<\/p>\n
The walls were pale green.<\/p>\n
We had painted that room four years earlier, when we were still hoping to have a child.<\/p>\n
I had spent some terrible nights in that room after our second miscarriage.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I sat against the wall because I couldn't stand looking at the empty space where we'd imagined putting a crib.<\/p>\n
There was another hole beside the window.<\/p>\n
Three rooms.<\/p>\n
Three damaged walls.<\/p>\n
I stopped pretending something had fallen.<\/p>\n
Then I heard the water again.<\/p>\n
I hurried into the kitchen.<\/p>\n
The hot-water tap was fully open.<\/p>\n
Steam rose from the sink.<\/p>\n
The window above it was covered with condensation.<\/p>\n
I shut off the faucet.<\/p>\n
For a moment, the kitchen fell quiet.<\/p>\n
Then I heard more water above me.<\/p>\n
I ran upstairs.<\/p>\n
The first bathroom had water pouring from the sink.<\/p>\n
The bathtub was running too.<\/p>\n
Its drain was open, but the constant stream had soaked the bathmat.<\/p>\n
I closed both taps.<\/p>\n
My hands had started shaking.<\/p>\n
I crossed the hallway to the bathroom attached to our former bedroom.<\/p>\n
Another faucet was open.<\/p>\n
I turned it off.<\/p>\n
Then I checked the others again.<\/p>\n
I couldn't stop thinking there might be one I'd missed.<\/p>\n
When I finally stood still, the house was silent.<\/p>\n
I leaned against the bathroom doorway.<\/p>\n
My legs felt weak.<\/p>\n
I had no idea how long those faucets had been open.<\/p>\n
They could have been running since Sunday.<\/p>\n
Maybe earlier.<\/p>\n
The thought of the water bill made my stomach twist.<\/p>\n
I could almost hear Brian explaining it.<\/p>\n
Somebody must have forgotten.<\/p>\n
Somebody must have made a mistake.<\/p>\n
That was how he'd handled so many things near the end.<\/p>\n
He never seemed responsible for anything that hurt me.<\/p>\n
I told myself I could deal with the damage.<\/p>\n
A contractor could repair the walls.<\/p>\n
A plumber could inspect the bathrooms.<\/p>\n
Money could settle the water bill.<\/p>\n
It would be expensive.<\/p>\n
But it was possible.<\/p>\n
I needed to believe that.<\/p>\n
I went downstairs again.<\/p>\n
Sunlight was coming through the blinds in the living room.<\/p>\n
Something on the floor caught the light.<\/p>\n
At first, I thought one of the windows had shattered.<\/p>\n
Tiny bright pieces covered part of the hardwood.<\/p>\n
I walked closer.<\/p>\n
And then I recognized the wooden frame.<\/p>\n
My grandmother's mirror.<\/p>\n
I stopped breathing for a moment.<\/p>\n
The frame was broken at one corner.<\/p>\n
The glass had been shattered into pieces that reached far across the floor.<\/p>\n
Some pieces were large enough to reflect my face.<\/p>\n
Others looked like little grains of ice.<\/p>\n
I sank to my knees.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease, no.\u201d<\/p>\n
I touched the frame without lifting it.<\/p>\n
Dark walnut.<\/p>\n
Carved flowers.<\/p>\n
A little wooden rose near the top had lost part of a petal.<\/p>\n
That mirror had belonged to Grandma Lena.<\/p>\n
My father's mother.<\/p>\n
She lived in a white farmhouse about an hour away.<\/p>\n
When I was little, I spent two weeks there every summer.<\/p>\n
Her kitchen always smelled of coffee and cinnamon.<\/p>\n
The porch had a low spot that creaked beneath my feet.<\/p>\n
And upstairs, above her dresser, hung that mirror.<\/p>\n
The old glass made reflections look slightly distorted.<\/p>\n
I used to stand in front of it every morning to brush my hair.<\/p>\n
Grandma would come up behind me.<\/p>\n
\u201cNicky, you're hurting yourself with that brush.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then she'd take it from my hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere. Let me.\u201d<\/p>\n
She brushed my hair slowly.<\/p>\n
She counted each stroke.<\/p>\n
By the time she reached one hundred, breakfast was usually ready.<\/p>\n
I didn't understand then how much those mornings would mean to me.<\/p>\n
My mother died when I was fifteen.<\/p>\n
That summer, I stayed with Grandma Lena.<\/p>\n
I barely talked.<\/p>\n
Some days, I couldn't finish a meal.<\/p>\n
But she kept our morning routine.<\/p>\n
She never demanded that I explain how I felt.<\/p>\n
She never asked me to stop crying.<\/p>\n
She just stood behind me with the brush.<\/p>\n
I could see both of us in that old glass.<\/p>\n
My tearful face.<\/p>\n
Her patient expression.<\/p>\n
Her hand moving carefully through my hair.<\/p>\n
After Grandma died eleven years ago, Dad gave me the mirror.<\/p>\n
He said she'd always wanted me to have it.<\/p>\n
I treasured it more than almost anything else she left behind.<\/p>\n
There was her quilt.<\/p>\n
Her little box of recipes.<\/p>\n
Her reading glasses.<\/p>\n
And that mirror.<\/p>\n
Brian knew all of this.<\/p>\n
I'd told him the stories.<\/p>\n
I'd explained why I could never part with it.<\/p>\n
And during our divorce, he'd made that mirror one of our longest arguments.<\/p>\n
It made no sense at the time.<\/p>\n
He'd never liked it.<\/p>\n
When I first hung it in the living room, he said it made the place look like an old woman's house.<\/p>\n
One Christmas, he wanted it taken down before his parents arrived.<\/p>\n
His mother thought it was outdated.<\/p>\n
After we repainted the living room, he suggested replacing it with something new.<\/p>\n
Yet when we separated, he suddenly wanted to keep it.<\/p>\n
He told the mediator it belonged to the house.<\/p>\n
I explained that it simply hung on a nail.<\/p>\n
Then he claimed it had been given to us as a wedding gift.<\/p>\n
That wasn't true.<\/p>\n
Grandma had died years before I married him.<\/p>\n
My father had given me the mirror before Brian and I had even met.<\/p>\n
Brian kept arguing.<\/p>\n
He suggested that we sell it and divide the proceeds.<\/p>\n
I offered to give him two hundred dollars.<\/p>\n
The whole mirror had once been valued at about four hundred.<\/p>\n
He refused.<\/p>\n
I asked him what he actually wanted.<\/p>\n
He smiled.<\/p>\n
It was the small, cold smile I'd come to recognize during our final year together.<\/p>\n
I didn't understand what that smile meant until much later.<\/p>\n
Three weeks before Brian had to leave the house, the judge officially confirmed that the mirror belonged to me.<\/p>\n
It had been mine before the marriage.<\/p>\n
It was a family inheritance.<\/p>\n
It wasn't part of our marital property.<\/p>\n
When Claire, my lawyer, told me the decision, I cried in the courthouse parking lot.<\/p>\n
I felt that I had finally protected one small piece of my family history.<\/p>\n
Now I was kneeling beside it.<\/p>\n
The glass was everywhere.<\/p>\n
The frame was cracked.<\/p>\n
And the one object Brian knew I could never replace had been destroyed.<\/p>\n
I wanted to gather the pieces immediately.<\/p>\n
I wanted to hold them.<\/p>\n
Instead, I remembered something Claire had said throughout the divorce.<\/p>\n
Whenever there was a disagreement over belongings, money, or property, she told me to keep proof.<\/p>\n
So I stood up.<\/p>\n
I took my phone out.<\/p>\n
And I began photographing the room.<\/p>\n
I didn't touch the broken mirror again.<\/p>\n
Not yet.<\/p>\n
I thought the worst part of my divorce was finally behind me. Then I opened my front door. Water was running somewhere inside. Not a little leak. Not the slow … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feel-every-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18533"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18538,"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18533\/revisions\/18538"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}