The Survivor Chronicles: Book 1, The Upheaval Read Free

didn’t even like him anymore. Not even a little. As she reviewed the past few years and became brutally honest with herself, she’d realized that she’d actually never really liked him. She’d simply been in awe of the striking, slightly older boy who had desired her too.
     
    And now the baby they had married for had just turned twelve. Their daughter, Rochelle, was smart and beautiful. She'd inherited her mother’s looks and her father’s brains. Unfortunately, she also inherited her mother’s rebellious, know-it-all streak. The combination was brutal, especially with the hormonal teen years looming. Though she dreamed of it every day, Mary Ellen knew she wouldn’t leave the marriage, not until Rochelle was out of high school. She was terrified a divorce would send her already headstrong daughter into a perilous emotional spiral that could never be controlled.
     
    She’d done many things wrong in her life, but she’d be damned if she took her daughter with her too.
     
    Six more years, she told herself. Six more years and she could be free of the whistling, and the controlling, and the shirts that held a different array of perfumes. Mary Ellen didn’t even wear perfume. In the beginning, she fought with him about it; she cried and carried on about his affairs, railed at both him and the heavens for the sheer unfairness of it all.
     
    On the day she had her realization, however, she quit fighting. Quit crying. Instead, she hired a private investigator who had now been tracking Larry for a little over six months. The day Rochelle left for college Mary Ellen was going to file for divorce, and she planned on taking her fair share with her when she went. The PI was accumulating a good amount of damaging evidence against her husband. Without it, she knew Larry would leave her with nothing. She’d endured too much for too long to allow that to happen.
     
    Larry had the college degree and a law degree on top of that. He was incessantly manipulative, and had a cruel streak that somehow still managed to astound her, even after so many years. Shortly after the wedding she’d found herself shoved into the role of meek little housewife. To be fair, however, she had allowed him to delegate this role for her, willfully accepting it. It seemed easier to compromise than to fight with him over it.
     
    In the beginning she’d done everything she could to make him happy. In the middle, she had continued to do so in the hopes that he would come home, that he would somehow learn to appreciate her and the things she did for him.
     
    Today? Today she didn’t give a rat’s ass if he ever came home again, and she definitely didn’t expect him to appreciate anything. Honestly, she wished she could get back all those years she had wasted trying to make him happy, years that she should have used to make herself happy, or even be happily married to someone else. Anyone else.
     
    She sighed. As her mother always used to say, if wishes were horses then beggars would ride. It had seemed like such a silly saying when she was growing up. As an adult, she understood it all too painfully.
     
    The back sliding glass door slid open behind her as Larry stepped onto the porch with her. Mary Ellen turned as Larry strode toward her, adjusting his tie as he moved. He was still striking, handsome and tall with dark hair going partially gray, and a firm physique. Even so, she found him ugly now, repulsive even.
     
    He broke off whistling. “Fix my tie.”
     
    It wasn’t a question. It was a command, and Mary Ellen’s jaw clenched ever-so-slightly. She quietly placed her coffee cup on the railing, smiled at him and grasped his tie. For one brief moment she allowed herself the delightful image of pushing it all the way up, shoving it into his throat and finally ending the unremitting whistling for good as she happily choked the life from him.
     
    Her smile widened into a grin as she released the tie. “All set.”
     
    “I’ll be working