My name is Neala, and at 65 years old, I had just officially said goodbye to the chalk dust of the high school lecture hall where I had taught for decades.
This old Victorian house had witnessed almost my entire life, from an enthusiastic young teacher to a widow, and now to this old woman whose hair was strewn with the frost of time.
On the mantlepiece, a photograph of my late husband, Samuel, still stood, solemn and imposing.
Thinking of him stirred a complex feeling in my heart, a mixture of sorrow and a sense of a heavy burden lifted.
People often say to speak no ill of the dead, but the invisible scars left on my soul by his beatings and harsh rebukes could never fade.
He was a tyrannical, violent man who always treated our son and me as his private property.
The day he found out he had terminal cancer was the same day our son, Nicholas, received his acceptance letter to a great state university.
I suppressed all my grievances and resentment to care for him until he closed his eyes for the last time, not out of love, but out of duty, and to allow Nicholas to focus on his studies.
The day my husband died, I did not shed a single tear.
