Prologue Final Part

Laurel—6 months later

I walked around the small apartment I rented, clutching a large picture frame to my chest. After months of living with Lauren while I went to therapy, I finally felt ready to be on my own again. I was scared but determined. I didn’t jump at shadows anymore, but I still gave corners wide berths. I spoke up for myself, but my voice trembled with fear. I was in a weird place, and I hoped living by myself would offer me the strength and independence I was missing to make myself feel whole again. The first step had been to get a job Carl couldn’t find me at, which I did. The second step was the one I was making now: standing on my own two feet.

I loved Lauren for everything she had done for me, but over the last few weeks, she had been pressuring me to start talking to men again. She thought a rebound guy would be good for me, no matter how much I told her that I wasn’t comfortable with talking to a man yet. She tried hard to understand, but I knew she thought that because she handled her trauma by acting out sexually, it would work for me too. We may be twins, but we were very different. I sighed as I stepped in the doorway of the bedroom.

“Are you alright?” Lauren asked worriedly as she wrapped an arm around my waist. “You know you can stay with me. If you’re not ready, you have a room at my house for as long as you need it.”

“I know, and as much as I appreciate it, it’s time for me to move on. You know how much I love being with you and Ty, but your house is where I ran to. It keeps me in a mental place I don’t want to be,” I told her.

“We can move,” she said without hesitation, making me shake my head as I smiled softly.

“No, Lauren. You shouldn’t have to uproot Ty or your life, because I’m fragile.”

“But— ”

“No, Lauren. I appreciate the offer, but we both knew I was going to eventually move on.” I lowered the frame from my chest to look down at it sadly. “I need to do this. This is what I have worked so hard for.”

She sighed before nodding. “I get it, Laurel. I’m proud of you. So, where are you putting your divorce certificate?”

I ran my fingers over the glass of the frame, reading my name on the certificate before sighing. It hurt that my marriage had ended. I felt like a failure, even though I knew I shouldn’t. I did everything I could to make Carl happy, but nothing worked. I told myself so many times that everything had been my fault. I had done something to create the distance between us. If I had been a better wife, he wouldn’t have treated me that way. He would have loved me.

But I was wrong. I now knew that no matter how great of a wife I was or could have been, I would have never made him love me. I wasn’t the problem. He was. It was hard to accept that information in the first place, but it was harder to remember it on my bad days. I sighed again as I lifted my head to meet her eyes. I was still unsure if hanging my framed divorce certificate was a smart idea, but for the past six months, it was the only thing that gave me enough strength to keep persevering without running back to him and begging for forgiveness.

“I think I’m going to hang it from my mirror in the bathroom,” I told her. “That way it’s the first thing I see in the morning and the last thing I see at night before I go to bed.”

She beamed widely at me. “That’s a great idea! I’ll get you a little shelf that you can put it on so when you’re ready to let it go, you can just take it off. How does that sound?”

“Thank you, Lauren.”

She followed me into the bathroom, where I leaned the frame against the mirror before stepping back to look at it.

“You don’t own me, Carl. Not anymore,” I whispered.

Lauren took my hand, squeezing it tightly as she stood silently by my side. “No, Laurie, he doesn’t. He never did.”

I laid my head on her shoulder again. “Yes, Lauren, he did. As much as I should have never let him have that much control over me, I did. And I hated every single moment of it.”

She sighed, her shoulders lowering defeatedly. “I know, sis. I wish I had taken you away sooner.”

“It’s not your fault. It was mine. I should have left when he started verbally abusing me. If I had, it would have never gotten physical. I should have been stronger. Like you and Mom.”

She kissed my cheek before steering me out of the bathroom. “Enough of that pity party, girl! Your bed is going to be delivered in an hour. We gotta get this rug down and your wall painted.”

I laughed as I bent down to grab the other end of the large 10 by 12-foot carpet.

“The landlord is going to kill me.”

She grinned at me as we struggled to carry the rug into the bedroom. “You’re getting your accent wall. It was something you always talked about, and now, you get to have it. Fuck your landlord. I’ll pay for it.”

I giggled happily as we rolled the carpet out. “We’re going to get paint all over the carpet.”

She wiggled her eyebrows at me. “Good! Live an imperfect life, Laurel.”

Imperfections. It was the one thing that would guarantee a punishment from Carl. Now, I purposely created an imperfection in my life every single day. Sometimes it was a bumpy hairstyle, while other times it was wearing mismatched socks. And Lauren joined me. It was funny to watch my always perfectly coiffed sister go to work with messed up hair or wonky makeup, but it made her support more evident to me. I loved it. She was always down for me, just like I always was for her too. When she held out a paint roller to me, I took it eagerly. As much as I pretended to be worried about what my landlord would say about me painting this wall sky blue, I was excited to do this with her.

“Are you ready?” She asked me as she poured the light blue into a painting pan in front of me before pouring a slightly darker blue into the one in front of her.

My hand tightened around the handle as I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Good. Remember, chaotic is the name of the game.”

“I will.”

“And go!”

We both dipped the rollers into the paint before starting to apply it on the wall, moving the rollers in weird paths that weaved chaos on the small wall. Within half an hour, every last inch of the white wall was covered, and all we could see were swirls of the two blues bleeding together, creating even more colors. We stepped back as we looked it over.

“It looks great!”

“It does! Thank you for helping me,” I replied happily.

“Of course! We should have let Ty help, though. He really would have made it chaotic,” she laughed.

“Ty would have more paint on him than the wall,” I giggled.

“Yeah, but we would have had a lot of fun!”

“And then we would have had to go to the hospital because he ate it.”

She groaned as we began to clean up the painting stuff. “Yeah. He is at that age where he eats weird stuff. Last week it was glue. Definitely not looking forward to seeing what this week's random non-edible thing is.”

“And once again, I’m super glad that you do not have a cat.”

Her eyes widened as she stared at me. “Do you think he would eat cat poop?”

I nodded. “You had to stop him from picking up a dog turd on our walk because it looked like a chocolate bar to him.”

She groaned again as we walked into the bathroom to wash our hands. “‘Have a boy,’ they said. ‘It’ll be fun,’ they said. Whoever ‘they’ are, I want to run them all over with my car. Boys are hard.”

I grimaced as I thought about some of the things my nephew had done. “Yeah. I don’t know how you do it, Lauren. The first time my son jumped off the arm of the couch onto some pillows, I would have bubble-wrapped him.”

She burst out laughing as she reached for the towel to dry her hands. “He is a handful. But, speaking of you having a child. You know you need a man for that, right?”

I threw my hands up in frustration. “Lauren, you promised!”

“I know, but—”

“No buts. I’m not ready. But when I am, I promise that you will be the first one to know,” I said.

She sighed. “Fine, but when you are, you have to promise to let me take you out.”

I hesitated before nodding. “Alright. As long as it’s not too crazy.”

She grinned at me as she draped her arm over my shoulder as we walked to the door to answer it. “I hate to tell you, Laurie, that’s all I know how to do.”

I groaned loudly, exaggerating it. “Don’t remind me.”