I smiled, stepped off at the very first stop, and walked away. When they finally arrived, they froze when they saw me…
PART 1
“You can stand,” my husband, Julian, said casually, his breath turning white in the freezing December air. “You’re pregnant, so think of it as exercise.”
He said it as if humiliating his pregnant wife were the most normal thing in the world. In his gloved hand, he casually held two first-class sleeper tickets for our cross-country train journey.
Beside him stood my sister-in-law, Chloe, wrapped in a designer trench coat that had cost more than the first car I ever owned.
“Oh, Nora, I feel absolutely terrible,” she said sweetly, staring at me with a smug little smile. “But my motion sickness gets unbearable on long trips.”
Julian claimed the holiday rush had left him with only two sleeper tickets. His brilliant solution was to make his six-month-pregnant wife spend fifty miserable hours standing in an unheated coach while he and his brother’s wife relaxed inside a warm, private cabin.
I didn’t argue. I didn’t scream. I simply nodded.
Julian took my silence as proof that I was still the obedient wife he’d trained me to be throughout our marriage. He gave me a satisfied smile.
Fifteen minutes into the train ride, I stood in a freezing vestibule while the train rocked beneath my feet and our baby gently kicked against my ribs. Then my phone buzzed.
It was a message from Julian:
I forgot to get food. Run out and grab something hot for us when the train makes its next stop. We’re going to sleep now.
He had already forced me into the cold, and now he expected me to act like his personal delivery service.
At first, I tried to hold it in. Then a strange, uncontrollable laugh escaped my throat.
“Next stop, Milwaukee,” the intercom announced through a burst of static.
When the doors opened, I didn’t head toward a station café or search for sandwiches. I stepped onto the freezing platform, turned around, and watched the massive silver train disappear into the snowy distance.
Julian and Chloe probably assumed I was rushing around trying to find them food. They had no idea I was going straight to the airport.
And they certainly had no clue about the thick manila envelope tucked safely inside my tote bag.
I opened the bag and slowly ran my fingers over the high-resolution photographs hidden inside. They had just trapped themselves inside a fifty-hour rolling prison.
Now, what would happen when I arrived at his parents’ house that very day, completely alone, carrying undeniable proof of his affair?