Breaking His Cold Cruel Boundaries

Summary

From the moment the ink dried on our marriage license, my husband drew a line down the center of our lives—an invisible, impenetrable border.

He claimed it was his mysophobia, a clinical obsession with cleanliness. His son, Henry, inherited the trait, flinching as if burned whenever I so much as brushed against his sleeve.

For twenty-seven years, father and son occupied the pristine bedrooms, while I slept on a cot in the drafty sunroom. We existed in parallel, never intersecting.