My husband str:uck my mother twice right in front of me and demanded, “Either she leaves tonight or our marriage is over.”

leverage to force her into giving him everything she had left.”

PART 3

I didn’t sleep at all that night.

Mom was resting in the small bedroom of the modest two-bedroom apartment we had just managed to rent.

I sat cross-legged on the hardwood floor of the living room, surrounded by cardboard boxes, bank records, printed statements, and legal files.

For the first time in my life, I wasn’t looking at my marriage as a wife trying to save it.

I was looking at it like an investigator studying evidence.