“What are you doing?” Mark asked, his voice suddenly lacing with a hint of actual panic.
“I’m leaving,” I said calmly, throwing dresses and pants into the bag.

“Good!” Brenda snapped, crossing her arms. “Let her go, Mark. When she realizes she has nothing without you, she’ll come crawling back.

Let her go live in some cheap apartment.”
I paused, turning to face the woman who had tormented me for years. “Brenda, I make $180,000 a year. My new promotion pushes that to almost a quarter of a million. I am going to live in a luxury hotel downtown.”

I walked over to the small lockbox on my dresser, punched in the code, and pulled out a thick manila folder. I slammed it into Mark’s chest. He reflexively grabbed it, his face turning the color of ash.

“What’s that?” Brenda demanded, trying to snatch it from him.
“Those are the foreclosure notices,” I said lightly, grabbing my toiletries. “And the legal threats from Mark’s former employer. The one he got fired from ten months ago.”
Brenda froze. Her eyes darted from me to her son. “Fired? What is she talking about, Mark?”
Mark was hyperventilating, staring at the papers in his hand. “Babe, please. Please don’t do this. I need you.

We need your new salary. The settlement is due on the first of the month.”
“You shouldn’t have let your mother cut off my hair,” I whispered. I zipped the suitcase shut, grabbed my purse, and walked out of the bedroom.
As I walked down the stairs, the screaming finally started. But this time, it wasn’t me. It was Brenda, shrieking in absolute horror as she read the financial documents, realizing her perfect, successful son was a complete fraud who had just lost the only safety net keeping him out of a jail cell.

By the time I reached the front door, Mark was sobbing, begging me from the top of the stairs to come back, telling his mother to shut up, pleading that we could fix this.
I didn’t even look back. I stepped out into the cool night air, locked the doors to my car, and drove away.

It’s been six months since that night. I rock a very chic buzzcut now, which pairs incredibly well with the tailored suits I wear to my corporate office. I filed for divorce the very next morning. Because my name wasn’t on the fraudulent loans Mark took out, my lawyers easily shielded my income from his catastrophic mess.
Mark couldn’t pay the settlement. He is currently facing felony charges for embezzlement and fraud. The bank foreclosed on the house, and since Brenda had co-signed his second mortgage to “help him invest,” she lost her retirement savings as well.

They are currently renting a cramped two-bedroom apartment on the bad side of town, surviving on Brenda’s meager social security checks.
She wanted me to learn my place. I did. It’s right at the top, leaving them both at the absolute bottom.