Chapter 8 - The Nursery on Oak Street
By November, the house on Oak Street was officially listed for sale by the court receiver.
Chloe and I spent three days packing up her personal belongings, transferring her furniture, her books, and her clothes to my house, where we had cleared out the master suite downstairs to make room for her and the baby.
On our last afternoon at the house, Chloe stood in the doorway of the second-floor nursery—the room Spencer had kept locked for four solid years.
The room was clean, bright, and empty. The late afternoon autumn sun streamed through the large window, casting warm square shadows across the hardwood floor.
I walked up behind her, placing my hands gently on her shoulders. "Are you okay, sweetie?"
"I thought I’d feel sad coming back into this room," Chloe murmured, her hand resting over her heavy, round stomach. "I thought I’d feel like a victim."
"And what do you feel?" I asked.
Chloe turned her head, looking at me with a serene, beautiful smile that I hadn't seen on her face in almost ten years.
"I feel free, Mom," she said quietly. "For four years, he made me believe my body was broken. He made me believe I was a failure because I couldn't give him what he wanted. But my body wasn't broken. My life was just infested by a parasite."
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She reached out, grabbed the brass door handle of the empty room, and pulled it shut with a firm, satisfying CLICK.
"Let's go home, Mom," Chloe said. "We have a real nursery to build."
