I said he was welcome to try, but that he should probably talk to a lawyer first because he might be surprised by what he’d agreed to. I told him he had 30 days to find somewhere else to live. He laughed and said I couldn’t kick him out of his own home. I told him again that it wasn’t his home and that it never had been. He said I was bluffing and that I’d never choose a teenager over my husband.
I told him that teenager was my daughter and that I would choose her over anyone in the world, including him. He didn’t believe me. He thought I’d calm down and change my mind. He thought I’d realize I needed him. He went to bed that night like nothing had happened. I slept in Lily’s room on an air mattress because I wanted her to know I was on her side.
The next morning, I called a locksmith and had all the locks changed while my husband was at work. The locksmith finished at 2:00 in the afternoon and handed me three new keys. I paid him in cash and watched him drive away. My phone started ringing before I even got back inside. My husband’s name flashed on the screen.
I let it go to voicemail. He called again. I declined it. He called a third time and I turned the sound off completely. By 4:00, he’d called me 37 times. I knew because I checked the call log while sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop open. Each voicemail was longer and angrier than the last one. The first few were confused, asking why the key wasn’t working and telling me to call him back.
Then they shifted to demanding I stop playing games and let him into his house. By message 20, he was yelling that I couldn’t lock him out of his own home and he’d call the police if I didn’t open the door immediately. I saved every single message. I opened a new folder on my computer and labeled it documentation.
I backed up the voicemails to three different locations. Then I texted him one sentence telling him he could collect his work clothes from the porch, but he wasn’t coming inside. He called again. I didn’t answer. Lily came downstairs around 5:00 and asked if everything was okay. I told her the locks were changed and her stepfather knew it.