The Girl I Used to Be, Heidi Hostetter [free e books to read .txt] 📗

on this hill like a king on his throne. Suddenly, the opulence didn’t impress her as much as it used to. The house was apart from the things that mattered to her. Neighbors never dropped by for coffee or to chat, as they had at Aunt Sarah’s house. When she and Marc did entertain, it was an organized occasion, with printed invitations, party clothes, and company manners.

Curated.

All the choices, big and small, that Jill had made over the years added up to a life she didn’t recognize and one she no longer wanted.

With a sigh, she returned to the house to find her prenup. Whether or not she wanted it, a fight was coming, and she’d best be ready.

As she made her way up the stairs to the master bedroom, it occurred to her how different she and Marc were when it came to storing important papers. It was funny, in a twisted sort of way. Marc was fastidious, obsessive even. Current projects were organized into neat files, older projects archived and tucked away from view. By contrast, Jill stuffed everything worth saving in a shoebox, newest on top, oldest on the bottom, and stored it in the back of her closet.

She crossed the master bedroom quickly, without looking at the bed.

There were two master closets in the bedroom, each a mirror image of the other and combined were larger than Jill’s first apartment. Inside were enough clothes, shoes, and accessories to supply a small boutique, many of them still unworn. Marc had insisted she have the best of everything, and to a girl who used to make Barbie clothes from paper towels and cotton balls, that seemed like something out of a fairy tale. So she’d accepted and spent lavishly. Sometimes she came to her closet just to sit there, because the sight of what she owned—the abundance of it all—would remind her of how lucky she was.

This time, Jill ignored everything except the lumpy shoebox in the far corner.

Inside, it smelled musty, of old paper and memories of the life she’d had before Marc. On the bottom was a copy of the lease for the apartment she’d rented. There was a faded picture of Jill and her roommates taken at a pub crawl one weekend. And a twist of tin foil that had once decorated a spindly Christmas tree. A letter from Rutgers congratulating her for making the dean’s list, for the third time in two years. And the coupon book she’d used to repay her student loans, with the date and check number carefully marked on each stub. After their marriage, Marc had paid the entire balance as if it were nothing. Now, Jill wished that she’d insisted on making the payments herself, because scribbling “paid” on each stub had been so satisfying. And finally, an overexposed Polaroid of her and Marc on the courthouse steps, newly married. Cush and his now ex-wife Angela had borne witness. There had been no other guests, which was strange, given how fond Marc was of entertaining. Her friends were not invited. His children didn’t come. There had been no reception afterward, no toasts, no dancing. At the time, Jill had been too timid to ask for more. She was twenty-three years old and thought that Marc, at forty-eight, knew better.

Jill tossed the picture back into the box, then unearthed what had brought her to the closet in the first place—her prenup. She hadn’t understood the document Marc had asked her to sign, so she’d been hesitant to do so. But then he’d explained that his marriage to Dianne had been abusive, that she was difficult and unpredictable, and that her outbursts scared the girls. He’d told Jill that when he’d decided that he couldn’t live as he had been, he’d asked Dianne for a divorce and she’d flown into a rage, threatening to take the only thing that mattered to him: the company his father had founded. She’d threatened to break it up, to sell it. And without a prenup in place, he was vulnerable.

All he wanted, he’d said, was to protect his girls. The prenuptial agreement he wanted Jill to sign was no more than a promise to his daughters. Proof that Marc had meant to pass along the company that his father had given him. Marc had said that after everything Dianne had put them through, he owed them a secure future.

And Jill had believed him.

She’d led with her heart, barely skimming the document before putting her signature at the bottom of it. Afterward, she’d dropped her copy into the shoebox and stepped into her new life, confident of the future Marc would provide. It was wonderful to be taken care of; Marc provided a lifestyle she could never have afforded on her own. She hadn’t even known what a personal shopper was until Marc had arranged that first appointment. And what an experience. Jill could barely wrap her head around the fact that a gum-snapping chubby girl from South Jersey would find herself sipping chilled Prosecco as she decided between outfits that cost more than her car.

But how things had changed.

She settled onto the floor of her closet, folding her legs underneath her, and read the agreement for the first time.

An hour later, she’d read it through twice and still couldn’t understand it. The phrasing was awkward, the meaning obscure. The first part seemed to say that if she and Marc divorced within the first five years of marriage, Marc would retain ownership of all his business assets. That part was fine. Harder to understand was the definition of a business asset. Further down was a section that seemed to say that if either of them wanted a divorce, it would happen quickly. Their case would be sent to mediation and heard by the first available judge. The goal, the paper said, was mediation within ten days and a final divorce within thirty.

Jill returned everything to the shoebox and pushed herself up from the floor. With the