The early afternoon sun shone into the entryway of the small house Roger had won in the divorce. Susan marveled, leaving the door open to the neighborhood, how a man as fastidious as Roger never seemed to remember to lock the door before leaving for work. Even when they were married, he left the house unlocked when he departed for work in the morning. She was usually still asleep, and any deranged lunatic could have crept into the house and satisfied his perversions on her. Did Roger ever think of that? Probably not. As long as Susan straightened up the house when the lunatic left, Roger would not have even noticed.
Susan closed the door and walked further into the house. She passed the living room and proceeded down the L-shaped hallway towards the bedrooms. The worn carpet of the hallway gave the impression of an apathetic housekeeper. Roger was anything but apathetic when it came to household order. Susan glanced into Roger’s bedroom. A neatly made bed filled most of the room and a single bureau stood against the left wall. Nothing looked out of place. She continued down the hall to the room Roger had converted into an office. Susan was sure that this was the only untidy room in the house.
Roger‘s desk was cluttered with manuscripts, pens, pencils, a dictionary and a thesaurus. Order was nonexistent here. The only area of the desk clear of miscellany was around a set of pictures perched on the hutch. It was as if a force field protected sacred items that only memory could touch. The simple metal frames surrounded photos of their daughters. Susan purchased the frames and had the pictures taken about 10 years ago. Her eyes continued to follow along the top of the hutch to the last picture on it: a picture of her.
The picture almost caused her to lose her nerve. Walking out the door would be so simple. She could walk out and go on with her life as if Roger was an unpleasant dream she once had. He wasn’t a nightmare really, just unpleasant.
No, Roger is a nightmare, she thought. He is a nightmare that I go to sleep every night hoping I can have again. I think I still love him. I can’t just walk away. This time I am going to do something about it.
She walked out of the room and back down the hallway.
Upon entering the living room, her confidence in what she planned strengthened to near obsession. Most of the furnishings in the house, hell even the prints hanging on the wall, were items she had bought while they were married. During the divorce, Roger seemed bent on taking as much of “their” things as possible. Susan knew he was trying to hurt her in some obscure way. That was what had hurt, not the taking of the “things”. He probably knew that as well.
The room had a large open middle area between the sofa and the entertainment unit Roger rarely used. A chair was against the outside wall, and another walkway led into the combination kitchen and dining area. Everything appeared to be in order yet again, but she knew if she looked closely enough she would find dust covering any exposed surface. Roger wasn’t one for dusting. That was her job, and God help her if she missed anything. Her anger started to rise in her mind, but she quickly dropped the thought and pushed her emotions back. Now was not the time for anger. She must remain calm and rational or her plans would never work.
The kitchen was spotless. Except for the dust, she thought. If he kept to his normal pattern, and he always kept to a pattern, this was a rarely used room. Roger was a passable cook when he set his mind to it but he usually left the meal planning and preparing to her. He probably ate out most of the time these days. Even when she worked outside of the home, he rarely made dinner for the family. That was “the wife’s work”. She finally quit her job to be home with their daughters and to do her wife’s work. Roger had quite the list of wife’s work when they were together: laundry, childcare, shopping (for anything), cleaning the house, and of course sex.
