Leaving the cases by the back door, she strode into Austin’s office, opened the floor safe, and stuffed everything into a large leather satchel without examining it—investment portfolios, car titles, CDs, cash, wills, advance directives, both of their passports.

He wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. He needed to stay and face whatever happened next.

After she had cleaned out the safe, she shut it and dug the household checkbook out of the upper drawer of Austin’s desk. First thing in the morning, she would go to the bank and transfer their liquid assets into her own bank account. He had enough to clean up from the fallout of this evening. Relationships to bolster. No doubt a mistress to complain to. With any luck, he wouldn’t expect her to move so fast.

While she worked, wetness streamed down her face and her emotions raged all over the place, rampant and chaotic. Pain and self-recrimination were a large part of it.

She was almost forty years old and childless, with a patchwork history of working part-time at various socially acceptable jobs and volunteering at socially acceptable charities. She had spent all her adult life trying to fit into the right-sized box.

Somehow she needed to unchain her mind. Needed to discover her authentic self and try to live that Molly’s life, before it was too late.

Slinging the leather satchel onto one shoulder, she slipped into the kitchen. Just before she pulled her suitcases out the door, she looked around one last time.

The kitchen counters were littered with open bottles, glasses, trays of uncooked pastry puffs, the bare vanilla-berry cake. Austin had a mess on his hands. That, along with work, would be more than enough to distract him while she took care of business in the morning.

All those empty bedrooms in a showcase house, and he had to take that other woman into hers. All those empty, childless bedrooms. One last wave of rage and pain burst through her.

The kitchen lights flickered. As the entire house fell into darkness, she wheeled her suitcases into the rainy night. Nobody approached as she threw her luggage into the back of the Escalade and climbed in. Relief washed over her raw nerves as she drove away.

The SUV’s headlights lit the edges of the wet, burgeoning foliage that hemmed the neighborhood streets. Black pressed on the other side of overhanging branches, turning sights that had been long familiar strange, until it felt as if she traveled down a secret tunnel.

Immense shapes seemed to lurk in the trees. She thought she saw a wolf watching her, and a raven. Each one melted back into leaves and shadows as she drove past it.

Then she broke out of the foliage into an open area by the entrance to the interstate. Massive relief lifted her up, as if she had traveled an unimaginable distance and crossed an invisible border to a new country.