I started with the walls.
I photographed the large hole in the living room from several angles, making sure the surrounding floor was visible.
Then I took pictures of the damage in the hallway and guest bedroom.
I included the plaster dust, the marks around the openings, and the pieces of broken drywall lying beneath them.
I wasn't thinking clearly.
Taking pictures gave me something simple to do.
Point.
Focus.
Press the button.
Move to the next room.
I recorded the kitchen faucet and the water pooled around the upstairs bathroom sink.
I filmed the bathtub, the wet bathmat, and the floor where water had spread beyond the bathroom fixtures.
I took close-up photographs of the mirror.
The frame.
The carved roses.
The broken glass.
I tried to capture every piece without moving anything.
My phone kept asking me whether I wanted to organize the photographs into an album.
I ignored the notification.
There was nothing organized about what I was looking at.
I had imagined that my first day back would involve opening windows and deciding where to put my books.
Instead, I was building a record of what someone had done to my home.
When I finished, I called Claire.
She answered quickly.
"Nicole, what's wrong?"
I tried to speak normally.
I really did.
But the words came out in a whisper.
"Brian damaged the house."
There was a short pause.
"What do you mean by damaged?"
I looked toward the living room.
"I mean the walls have holes in them. The faucets were running. The upstairs floors are wet."
I swallowed.
"And he broke Grandma Lena's mirror."
Claire's voice changed immediately.
"Are you still inside the property?"
"Yes."
"Have you touched anything?"
"I turned off the water."
"All right. Don't start cleaning. Don't throw anything away. Have you taken photographs?"
"Everything I could."
"Good. I want you to make a complete video recording of the house, including the damage and the condition of every room. Save the original files."
I looked at the broken frame.
"I already took pictures of the mirror."
"Keep them. Don't contact Brian, Nicole. Not by phone, not by text, and not through anyone else."
I knew she was right.
I also knew how badly I wanted to ignore her.
"I want to ask him why."
"I understand."
"No, I don't think you do. He knew what that mirror meant to me."
Claire let me sit with that for a moment.
Then she spoke more gently.
"Whatever his reason was, we need to establish what happened before we do anything else."
I closed my eyes.
"All right."
"There's still a hearing scheduled for the remaining financial matters later this week. This evidence may be relevant. Preserve everything, and send me copies as soon as you can."
I promised I would.
After we hung up, I stood in the hallway with my phone in my hand.
The house seemed unnaturally quiet now that the water was off.
I could hear a faint drip somewhere upstairs.
I went back and checked the faucets.
All of them were closed.
Then I began recording the video Claire had requested.
I walked slowly through the house, explaining what I was showing as clearly as I could.
The holes.
The damaged floors.
The running water's aftermath.
The mirror.
When I reached the living room again, I had to stop speaking.
I couldn't make myself describe the broken frame without my voice cracking.
I ended the recording and sat on the bottom stair.
For the first time since entering the house, I let myself cry.
Not loudly.
There was no dramatic collapse.
I covered my face with both hands and cried because I was tired.
I was tired of having to prove that something mattered to me.
Tired of every disagreement becoming a battle.
Tired of being told, in one way or another, that I was unreasonable for wanting the bare minimum of decency.
And I was tired of being afraid that Brian would find some new way to make my life harder.
I had spent eight months telling myself that the divorce would end the worst of it.
Now I was sitting in a damaged house, wondering whether I had simply underestimated how far he would go.
When I finally stood, I walked through the rooms once more.
I didn't touch the mirror.
I didn't sweep up the glass.
I didn't begin repairs.
I locked the door and left.
On the drive away, I kept glancing at the passenger seat, where my phone rested beside my notebook.
The list I had written that morning was still there.
Clean the floors.
Open the windows.
Make the place feel like home.
I folded the paper and put it in my bag.
I couldn't look at it anymore.
That evening, I sent Claire the photographs and video files.
She confirmed that she had received them and told me to keep the originals safe.
She also reminded me not to post anything online or discuss the damage with people who might carry the information back to Brian.
I hadn't planned to post anything.
I wasn't looking for sympathy.
I wanted the house repaired.
I wanted my grandmother's mirror back, although I knew that was impossible.
Mostly, I wanted Brian to stop having a place in every decision I made.
But that was easier to say than to accomplish.
The next morning, I returned to the property with my father.
He was sixty-eight, and he had been a steady presence throughout the divorce without ever trying to take control of it.
He attended hearings when I asked him to.
He drove me home after difficult meetings.
He listened when I needed to talk, and he stayed quiet when I didn't.
He never told me what I should feel about Brian.
He never demanded that I defend my choices.
When I told him the house had been damaged, he didn't immediately ask what Brian had done.
He asked whether I was all right.
That was my father.
Even when something terrible had happened, he checked on me first.
I unlocked the front door and stepped aside.
Dad entered slowly.
He looked at the living room wall.
Then at the hallway.
He walked into the guest bedroom and examined the third hole.
He said nothing.
I followed him upstairs and showed him the wet flooring and the bathmat.
He checked the faucets, turning each handle slightly to make sure they were fully closed.
When we returned downstairs, he stopped in the living room.
The mirror lay exactly where I had left it.
For a long moment, Dad didn't move.
Then he crouched beside the frame.
He was careful not to touch the glass.
One of the carved roses had separated from the wood and lay near the baseboard.
Dad picked it up by the intact stem.
His thumb moved across the broken edge.
I watched his face.
He had always been a man who kept his emotions private.
I had seen him cry only a handful of times in my life.
When my mother died.
At her funeral.
And once, years later, when he found an old photograph of the three of us together.
Now his expression had changed in a way I couldn't quite identify.
He looked angry.
But it wasn't the ordinary anger of a man seeing property damaged.
There was something quieter beneath it.
"He understood what this was to you," Dad said.
I nodded.
"He knew."
Dad looked down at the broken rose in his hand.
Then he placed it carefully beside the frame.
"Did you take pictures before doing anything?"
"Yes. Claire told me not to clean up."
"Good."
He stood and looked around the room again.
I waited for him to say something about Brian.
I wanted him to tell me that Brian was cruel, that he had always known there was something wrong with him, that I hadn't deserved any of this.
Dad didn't say those things.
Instead, he asked whether Claire had seen the evidence.
"She has the photographs and video."
"Then follow her advice."
I frowned.
"That's all?"
He turned toward me.
"What else should I say?"
"I don't know. Something."
Dad's expression softened, but only a little.
"I know you're hurt."
I looked away.
"I don't want to be hurt anymore."
"I know that, too."
He didn't offer a promise that everything would be fine.
He didn't tell me Brian would pay for what he had done.
He simply stood beside me in the room where the mirror had been destroyed.
For a while, that helped.
We left the house without cleaning anything.
Dad drove me home, and we talked about ordinary things on the way.
The weather.
A neighbor who had recently changed jobs.
Whether I had enough groceries.
I knew he was trying to give me a break from the divorce.
I appreciated it, even though I could not stop thinking about the house.
That night, I dreamed about the mirror.
In the dream, it was whole again.
My grandmother stood behind me, brushing my hair.
I watched her hands move through the reflection, counting the strokes with her.
When I woke, I could still hear her voice in my memory.
One hundred.
Always one hundred.
Then I remembered the broken glass.
And the dream was gone.
Click here to continue reading: PART 3: My Father Had Stayed Quiet Through Every Hearing, but One Small Detail About the Broken Mirror Seemed to Change Something in Him
I Thought Winning the House Meant I Could Finally Breathe, Until I Opened the Front Door and Heard Water Running
Part 2 of 8
