Follow that tale

I've decided to post portions of a story through several blogs that I post to. The initial installment is of course being posted here. Then head to my personal blog on Friday for the next installment.
Lynn paced back and forth across the floor from window to window. Knife pain of disappointment, of betrayal, of sheer emotional exhaustion sliced to her core. For twenty years she shared his home, raised his children, kept his house. Half of her life was dedicated to him.
How did he repay her? Did he ever once utter a word of love? Did he ever once show her consideration? Did he offer a speck of kindness? Did he ever once think about her?
Every day he came home from work, he greeted the dog with words of love and scratches behind the ears. For her, he said nothing as he passed her on his way to the bathroom. Every day he sat down to dinner with barely a word for each other. Barely an acknowledging glance.
Every night she cried herself to sleep. Loneliness consumed her. Back in the day, she’d been a fine catch. She was a popular, pretty girl who had once had her pick of boys. When she made her choice she didn’t see what a mistake it would out to be.
Did he even love her? She dropped in the closest chair, grabbed a pack of smokes and lit up a cig. How did you know if someone loved you? How could you tell?
She scanned her memories. Love…love…four letter word. Books, movies, songs, made love out to sound so real, something tangible, something worthwhile. Love was a lie! There was no such thing as love.
When had it happened? When had what she thought was love turned into apathy? When had it withered into dusty disillusionment? To hate.
Smoke and tears filled her eyes, blurring her vision. She’d settled. She’d panicked and then she’d settled believing that everything would work out in the end. But it hadn’t.
Now all she wanted to was freedom. Freedom from the man who had taken twenty years of her life and strangled her with it.
Her hand trembled as she lifted the cigarette to her lips and took a hard drag.
Once upon a time, she was strong, she was vibrant, she was brave. Once upon a time she’d stood on her own two feet and could handle anything that life threw at her.
It was almost as if over night she woke up to learn she couldn’t even leave her house without his approval. It wasn’t that he cared where she went, or who she was with. It was the fact he enjoyed the control.
When he’d put the bank accounts in his name alone she rebelled but he’d calmly explained that she wouldn’t be able to balance the check book or keep accounts straight. Besides, if she wanted anything she just needed to let him know and he’d make sure to give her the money, or better yet, he’d take care of it for her.
Then one morning she woke up to find that she didn’t have a penny to her name, she had to fight with him for every cent. He controlled every aspect of her life.
He took pleasure in making her miserable. He would find a sore spot on her and he would pick at it until she was nothing more than a mass of quivering raw nerve.
Agonized and miserable.
Her credit was in shambles. Something he had subtly prodded her into and she was such a fool she hadn’t even noticed until it was too late.
She had tried to leave him once. She was in such pain from dealing with a man who treated her like so much dogshit scraped from, the sole of his shoe that she’d been stunned to find a man in the world who was actually kind and caring. He’d treated her like she always imagined a man who loved her would treat her.
She packed up and was ready to walk away. She had one and a half feet out the door but the chains securing her to him were too strong to break. He’d make it so she’d never see her children again. He’d promised her that. She had no money, no job. He’d take the house, the kids and she’d be out on the street with nothing.
Besides, she would rot in hell for eternity if she left him. Her mortal soul would be lost, considered to the fires of damnation for being a faithless slut of a wife. To live in hell on earth or spend the rest of then here after being roasted like a piglet on a spit.
She crumbled and stayed right where he wanted her—under his thumb.