Chapter Fourteen

The food and new attitude did Samantha a lot of good. It was like she walked around the house with a fresh set of eyes. She tied her hair back and started with the laundry, looking at his clothes mixed with hers in disgust.

She was a nuisance.

A bother.

Clingy.

A child.

She punctuated every thought with another item of his she threw in a separate pile to go back in the basket, then she yanked his towel off the hook and threw it on top of everything she left behind. Luckily, the washroom was upstairs so she took her clothes and sorted them in there before starting the first load.

After an initial pang of anxiety, feeling like she was being petty and immature, she decided that it felt good. Next, she stripped everything off of the bed so it could wait its turn through the machines. Feeling a moment of satisfaction, she moved to the bathroom with cleaning supplies and started in the shower, scrubbing down the walls. Unsure what to do with his hygiene items, she gathered everything into a small box and took it to the guest room downstairs. Except his cologne. She emptied it in the sink, gagging on the intensity of the smell then threw it in the trash.

One hundred and fifty dollars, down the drain, she thought coldly. Fuck it. I bought it.

Richard didn't understand that a lot of the items in the house, she bought with her own money that she worked for. The food, the supplies, all of that came from her, not to mention the things she would pick up for him that she knew he would like. She covered the mortgage and basic utility bills. And the cell phone bill. A lot of the extras they indulged in came from him, but she maintained the foundation of the home financially as well as physically.

Everything about her existence with him had been to not be a bother, or burden, or another responsibility on his plate. She was so determined to carry more than her fair share of the weight. It's what made her bitter about his attitude and the whole situation. He knew how to cut her where it hurt the most.

Everything I’ve worked so hard to maintain and the burdens I take on for him, he throws in my face. Her face screwed up from the bitter smell and realization. Not only is he ungrateful for it, he doesn’t even see it.

She opened the window to air out the bathroom, then figured the whole house could use a dose of the fresh, crisp breeze that drifted in and did the same downstairs. She avoided the living room right now. After cleaning the carpet, everytime she thought about going in there, she imagined smashing the ever living shit out of everything in there. She vibrated with the need to destroy the tv, the lamps, rend the cushions and curtains and pull the pictures from the walls...

So she refrained and ignored the room for now. In her cleaning frenzy, she skipped over the study, the half bath and the guestroom with its ensuite bathroom since she was putting his things there.

She took a break for lunch, mixing up a small can of tuna and dipping a few crackers in it while she determined what should be done in the kitchen. It was kept spotless and organized so she chose to wipe down the counters and cabinets and check the items in the fridge for anything expired. She came across stupid things, like an empty bottle of ketchup.

Who the hell puts that back in a fridge, she thought irritably. It annoyed her to no end because it was things like this, things that she had to come along behind him and clean up. It would have taken just as much effort to put the damn thing in the trash as in the fridge.

It angered her so much that she wound up yanking everything out of the fridge and furiously wiped down the shelves and drawers. After putting the good items away, she moved to the freezer and came across prepared dinners she had made for him in the past few months. She stashed them in here when he came home so late, so they could be eaten later and not gone to waste. They were a sickening physical representation of his thoughtlessness and lack of care or appreciation.

Trashed.

Each one she threw out felt like another snip to the ties that bound her to him, a cleansing of every night she lay awake in bed, waiting, wondering and wishing for him to come home.

She took the haul of trash out to the dumpster. When she got back inside, the severe smell of the cleaning chemicals burned her nostrils. Her steam was running out and she decided to leave the floors for tomorrow to have some kind of plan for the next day.

As she sat at the kitchen island, she opened her phone. Not one call or text from anybody. Not Richard, not their, or his, friends. Did they know? Has she already been portrayed to be the over demanding 'ungrateful bitch' of a housewife they congratulated him on getting away from?

It didn't matter. She rested her head on her arms on the table, trying to keep the feel of loneliness from creeping back in when the doorbell rang. She panicked, not knowing who it could be. She opened the door slowly to see a delivery man with a box.

He was looking down at his handheld device, getting it ready for her to sign. "Good afternoon, ma'am," he said amiably. "If you could sign for this please..." He looked up and his eyes immediately darted to her blackened eye.

"Um, ma'am, are you okay?" he asked with genuine concern.

"I'm fi..." She began to tell him she was fine. She knew she wasn't and her appearance betrayed it. This kind young man's awareness of her plight tugged at her heart and eased a little bit of the feeling of total isolation to know that somebody cared. "Um, I will be, thank you."

"Yes ma'am," he replied, then paused and peered at her with true concern, giving her a chance to talk if she needed to. When she didn't, he continued and held up his device. "If you could sign for this please."

"Sure thing," she smiled weakly and signed, receiving the box.

"Have a good day ma'am," he said, then his brows drew down together. "And if I may be so bold, please, don't wait until it's too late."