It was unseasonably cold the day Margaret decided that she had had enough. Jack was gone for the day at some board meeting. She was glad. If he had been home, even if he didn't get "rough" (as he put it), she would have stayed out of fear. She was what her friend Karen liked to call "cow-ed". Too dumb to move out of the way. She'd suffered bruised skin and broken bones but hadn't left.
Margaret didn't know how much Karen was enjoying the irony that she'd spent her life urging Margaret to leave Jack but it was her death that was the catalyst.
Tears streamed down her face as she stuffed clothes into her only suitcase. They ran wet and hot down her face, marking each piece of clothing that she took with her sorrow. She wasn't sad about leaving or what she planned to do to Jack. He had that coming, he was a monster. She was sad for Karen, a woman whose only crime was to befriend her.
When she was finished and the suitcase had been put by the front door, she sat down in the front room. She took a deep, shuddering breath as she pulled her wedding ring off her finger. She set it down on the table next to her chair. Her face scrunched into more determined lines. There was work to do.
###
Jack came home at a quarter to six. His hand tightened around the handle of the door when he couldn't smell dinner. "Margaret! Margaret! Where the hell are you!?!" He slammed the door behind him and flung the hall closet open. He stuck his jacket on a hanger and slapped it back into the closet. The whole while he was muttering to himself. He stopped in his tracks when his eyes lit upon a note in his wife's meticulous script:
Duke is outside, please let him in.
"Damnable woman! Where is she?!? Must I do everything myself?" Jack stomped through the house to the kitchen. I'm glad Margaret had never gotten pregnant. She'd probably leave my kid outside. What had she cooked in here that smelled so God awful???
Jack jerked the handle of the back door. He looked down curiously at the sound of a match striking.
The world bloomed yellow and orange.
###
Margaret sat in the movie theater watching The Postman Always Rings Twice. What was she going to do? Looking up to the screen, she thought she could be a diner waitress. She may not look as fabulous as Lana Turner but she could make it work. It wouldn't be a glamorous life but it would be her life. She let her hand slip into her purse and fingered the wad of cash that she had taken from Jack's stash. Thank God that he didn't trust banks.
When the movie finished she went outside and hailed a cab. It took her a moment, but one pulled up. It had the most curious body design, its lines much harder than the much rounder yellow taxis around it. Margaret had a good feeling about it.
The cabbie was tall and lanky, all limbs it seemed. He helped her with her suitcase into the trunk of the taxi. As they both got settled, he looked at her through the rear-view mirror. He had the most striking slate-gray eyes.
"Where to, ma'am?" he asked.
"Miss."
"Excuse me?"
"I'm not married," she waved her unadorned left hand.
"My apologies. I'm Isaac. What's your name, miss?"
"I'm Mar—" she stopped mid-sentence and reflected. That name was someone weak. Someone who had been "cow-ed". That wasn't her any longer. When she looked back to Isaac, it was with a new determination in her eyes. "Karen."
"Where to, Miss Karen?"
"A diner."
"Any one in particular?"
"A diner with an opening for a waitress."
"I think I have just the place for you. It's a place called Mel's. Al is always looking for quality help..."
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