I'd kept every single one locked away in the safe. I couldn't let them go.
Later, as Ida's career took off, her gifts grew more expensive.
I accepted each one with the same joy, because they were proof that Ida had once loved me deeply.
But then came the second year after we moved into the mansion. That was when Humphrey appeared.
The vanity began filling up with luxury watches and bracelets from designer brands.
The closet started overflowing with the latest haute couture from every season.
Some of these pieces were worth hundreds of thousands. Some were worth millions. But they were no longer given out of love.
They were just apologies. Compensation. Hush money for the countless nights I'd spent waiting alone while she was with someone else.
I looked at all of it and walked past without touching a thing.
I packed only what was truly mine.
The day I finished, Ida happened to come home.
She saw the suitcase in my hand and frowned.
"Where are you going this time?"
She still thought I was just throwing a tantrum.
After all, the old me had threatened to leave more than once.
I didn't correct her. I just lowered my gaze. "Just need to clear my head."
Ida didn't notice anything different about me. Instead, she pulled me into her arms.
"Roland, I've been waiting for you to reach out these past few days."
Waiting for me to reach out?
But I remembered clearly. Every time I'd texted her before, asking her to come home, all I ever got back was an impatient brush-off.
She cupped my face in both hands and stared at me, her eyes dead serious.
"All you had to do was say the word, and I would've come straight home. But you didn't."
Ida's tone was full of complaints.
As if the person who'd spent the past few days at another man's side wasn't her at all.
I didn't call her out on it. Instead, a faint smile tugged at my lips.
Ida mistook it for forgiveness. She rose on her tiptoes and pressed a light kiss to the corner of my mouth.
"Roland, I just knew it. You're not like your father."
Not like my father?
The words left her mouth without warning and drove straight into my heart like a blade. The pain stole my breath.
She knew. She knew exactly how much damage my mother's affair and abuse had done to my father and me.
If my father hadn't been strong enough, brave enough, he'd be the one buried in a grave right now.
He wouldn't have escaped abroad and built a life worth living.