Face-Slapping13 min read
My Last Three Months: How I Turned the Story Upside Down
ButterPicks14 views
I woke up with my face burning and a stranger's IV in my hand. White ceiling tiles, quiet machines, and a nurse who smiled with the practiced softness of someone who knows every line in their script.
"Kathleen," she said. "Don't move your hand. The dressing is fresh."
"Who is Kathleen?" I wanted to ask. Instead I touched my face and felt the sting of cooling gel where a splash of coffee had landed. My left ring finger trembled. There was a ring — meek, ordinary, but my hand felt foreign on it.
"You're awake," the nurse said again. "Try to rest."
I had been reading trash romance novels before bed. I had posted one snarky comment online. One blink and I was inside the novel — not as its heroine, but as the doomed, forgiving wife the author used as a stepping stone. I remembered frames of that life like a film on repeat: my wedding dress, the company dinners, the little handoffs of cash into a business that wasn't mine to control, the voice that never really loved me but took my name.
"Learnt the hard way," I whispered. "Nice of you to take over my life, universe."
The nurse patted my hand. "Don't talk too much. Your vitals need rest."
I lay there and let the machine hum and my heart sabotage the calm. Three years. The book's plot had me living three years in a marriage where my name meant balance sheet and pity, where he — Leon Schulze — took what he liked and left my feelings as stage props.
"Do not be melodramatic, Kathleen," I told myself. The truth was that whatever this world had expected of me — martyrdom, silence, an illness that made me holy — I had a head full of my life and a spine I had just remembered how to use.
I sat up. I put my feet on the floor and felt the cold. The nurse frowned. "You shouldn't move too fast."
"I need coffee," I said.
"You—" She opened her mouth and closed it. Patients in books are gentle; patients with money get argued for and coddled. I had money. I had a ring. I had a will that wasn't going to be signed yet.
"Please," I told her. "Help me check out. I want out."
"There's more tests—"
"Make them call the doctor. I am checking out."
She left with the kind of smile that knew when to lose. I dressed in a coat that hid my burned cheek and walked out into a world that smelled the same and had the same people in new costumes. My house — our house — felt like someone else had put furniture into my life.
Leon was on the sofa with his phone when I walked in. He looked up, saw me, and the expression was almost practiced.
"You came home," he said blandly.
"I came home," I replied. "Did you come to see me in the hospital?"
He shifted. "I was busy. You know how it is."
"Busy building the kind of reputation where you can have both a wife and a reason to avoid her?"
He blinked like a man who had not been rehearsed for the phrase "bastard" but already had to wear it.
Isabelle Ali the secretary sat with him on the sofa an arm's length too close. She had that clean, pretty-faced cruelty of women who learned to charm and weaponize charm as survival. She smiled at me the way a cat looks at a bird.
"Kathleen," she said. "You look well."
"Thanks," I said. "You too. You... thrive on other people's wristwatches, don't you?"
Leon coughed. "What's this about?"
"What's it about?" I laughed, a short sound that had nothing of innocence. "Is it about the fact that you and Isabelle have been 'working late' for a year? Is it about the fact that you have two-year-old twins tucked into a flat two blocks away? Is it about how you call them 'mistakes' but you pay for formula with what, exactly?"
"Stop," Leon said.
"Stop?" I echoed. "Stop what? Existing? Being dishonest? I don't borrow your grace for that."
"You're slanderous," he said, voice hardening. "You can't just say—"
"I can," I interrupted. "Because I have proof."
He tilted his head, smug. "Proof of what? Of your inability to be grateful for my sacrifice?"
Isabelle's eyes were wet already. Her mouth trembled. Leon's hand went to the space where my ring finger would be.
"I am done," I told him. "I checked my records yesterday. Your company overdrafts, the transfers to 'consultants' that trace back to accounts you supposedly don't manage, the dates when you were 'working late,' and your fingerprints on invoices. I have messages where you call the other woman 'the future' and where you make jokes about me being 'a charity case.'"
"No," Leon said. He smiled then, a dangerously even smile. "You're delusional. You're sick."
"I was told that," I said. "But here is the thing: a lot of my sickness is in your head now because I won't let you write this ending."
He laughed, not loud but the kind of laugh that says you're losing the room. "And what are you going to do, Kathleen? Post another comment? Start a blog? Because nothing you say will change the facts."
"Facts," I said, and decided to be honest with him and with myself. "I am going to change where the facts are written."
I used every slightly legal channel I had. I recorded conversations. I learned dates and names. I compiled bank transfers and QR codes and messages and voice notes. I was a woman given three months in a narrative and a lifetime's experience in half a life; I turned to tools and to people who understood how to make a truth sticky.
"You're going to take my money," Leon said when it started to come together. He tried to bargain, to belittle, to charm. It was all backward now. He had spent three years treating me like an account, and I had learned how to audit.
"I am going to divorce you," I told him plainly. "I am going to cut you off from funds you are not entitled to and put you in a position where you must answer publicly for the account books of the company you run."
"Divorce?" His laugh broke. "You will never get the board in your boat. Your will is a paper game. You are terminal—"
"You're still quoting the book," I said. "You'd think a man who uses novels to justify cruelty might at least have better lines."
I learned to smile like a woman who knows the punchline. I practiced my face for the occasions when the cameras came. Leon thought I was crumbling; I was rehearsing.
Then I called Blaise Lombardo.
He was the man who ran half of show business in this city, who set rooms into motion with a single email. He owned a company where young men learned choreography and young women learned to wear lipstick like armor. He owed me a favor for a reckless investment and because he did, he showed up at the right time.
"You want a gala?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "Bring the city. Bring the investors. Bring his board. Bring his mother."
"His mother?" Blaise's voice softened. "You know Lucille Harrison won't enjoy the light."
"Bring her anyway."
He paused. "Kathleen, what's your plan?"
"Expose him," I said. "But do it cleanly. Let him have a stage where his charm can't shield him. Let the cameras have him in high definition."
"You're merciless."
"I am alive," I corrected. "Not merciless. Accurately merciful."
We booked the gala in the biggest hall in the city where Leon's company had their annual investor dinner. The room would be full: shareholders, media, old money in gowns, young money in tuxes. I bought a ticket labeled simply as "guest of the board" — which is how you get into places.
On the night of the gala I wore the red. I wore a dress that would not be described in metaphor because the rules of the story loved metaphors but also because I intended to be plain and un-lovable and visible. People eyed me with the reflex of gossip: the woman who didn't break acted like she had.
Leon arrived with his new taste in him: a tux that said "I belong to a family of decisions" and a smile that belonged to a man certain things could be hidden. Lucille Harrison, tall, perfumed, her smile a machine, glided in with the polished arrogance of a woman used to controlling rooms. Isabelle came too, a little late, like a shadow that knows where the light will fall.
"Blaise," I had told him earlier, "we will record. We will show. You will host with me on the stage. The board's cameras will be live."
He had looked at me and then at the ledger pages I'd placed in his hand, and his eyes had gone very, very clear. "You will make a scene," he said.
"Public," I reminded him.
"Okay then," he said with the tired grin of someone who meets art with ledger. "Public."
We began with applause — a round for the year, the champagne, the speeches. Speeches are where men like Leon feel invincible. They stand at the podium and deliver the myth of themselves in tidy paragraphs. He was the kind of speaker who speaks in examples: "We are family. We are unity. Our future is here."
Then Blaise walked on with me.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, as if this was another toast. "We have a surprise address. Kathleen, if you'd like..."
The microphones were on. The stage lights were hot like truth under a magnifying glass.
I pressed the small remote in my hand. A large screen behind us came alive. It played a series of short clips — each one a lock clicking into place. There was a video of Leon entering an apartment at midnight with a child's backpack peeking from a closet. There was a transfer notice matching dates Leon had told me he was at work. There was a voice message in which he referred to "the twins" and a nickname he'd never used in front of me.
The first murmur was mild. Then the murmurs turned to exclamations. People rustled in their seats. Phones rose like a mesh of field mice turned to camera lenses.
Leon stood utterly still. For the first thirty seconds his face was composed, admired, the soldier smiling for a photograph. He grew stiller as each clip played. He sank from composure to confusion, confusion to denial, and denial to a new animal fear. The blood left his cheeks. He mouthed "no," small and useless.
"Leon," I said into the mic, because the room needed address, because the narrative wanted plot. "You told me, 'I don't love you, but I need you.'"
He swallowed. "Kathleen—"
"It's okay," I told him. "You can lie. You have made a career of it. But please, don't threaten to embarrass me. I'm a private citizen no more. Stand up. Tell them you didn't have children. Tell them you're not the man who took my money and gave another woman his nights."
He laughed then, the too-sure laugh of a man seeking the old script: prestige covers shame. "This is a smear," he said. "This is ridiculous. These are forgeries. You think you can fabricate—"
"I have bank transfers with your signature," Blaise said. "I have calls from numbers registered to an address two blocks from yours. I have photographs of you with the children. You have the whole board in person. Tell them."
"I didn't know," Leon said finally. "I didn't—"
A woman in the front row began to cry. Someone else started to film. A camera flashed. Whispers became a tide. Lucille Harrison, who had been the kind of mother who believed image was everything, stepped forward like armor placed over a wound.
"Kathleen," she said, voice thin, with the brittle pain of a woman who measures grandchildren like jewelry, "you are lying. My son—"
"Your son," I said, looking directly at her, "bought silence. He bought it with accounts named after trusts and friends. You accepted his actions because they were profitable. Don't pretend you didn't know."
Lucille's jaw clicked. Her mouth tried to craft the next sentence and could not find it. Her face was the color of a photographed pearl under stress. Around us, seats scraped back, conversations broke off mid-breath. Phones recorded the crackling of a dynasty unstitched.
"You're making this out," Lucille sputtered. "You're a manipulative woman scorned."
At that the room laughed — not gently. The laugh landed like a stone. It had the sound of realization: the old order might not hold. People who had come for canapés and company reviews were watching something more sordid. Board members were wiping their glasses like men suddenly faced with a new market risk.
Leon, who had tried to smile his way out, was now moving along a scale I had seen in nightmares and novels: arrogance, irritation, smirk, incredulity, then absolute collapse.
He took two steps backward. "This is illegal," he said. "You can't—"
"I did it legally," I told him. "I archived everything. I wrote to the auditors months ago. I went to the right counsel. I gave everyone a chance. This is the first time we are all seeing it in one place."
He reached for his phone and fumbled with keys. "They're doctored," he whispered. "They are manipulated."
A young woman rose, an accountant with damp lashes, and stepped forward. "Mr. Schulze," she said. "I was asked to reconcile an account six months ago. I asked questions. They were shut down. This is not doctored."
The room had transformed into a contest of social truth. Conversations bent toward legal counsel and headlines. Phones flooded social media: Live feeds, captions with exclamation points. People swiveled in our direction like birds catching wind.
Leon moved like someone who had been composed out of other people's approvals and suddenly had to exist without them. He smiled once more, small and sorrowful, and it imploded. His mouth opened, closed, then opened again like a trap closing on a slipper.
"No," he said. "I meant to— it was for the company. For the company’s stability. You think I wanted to— she was there when I needed—"
"Stop," I said. "This is your moment. Say it. Say you used me until you didn't need me. Say you lied to me for years. Say you built a second life beside me."
He dropped to his knees on the stage. "Please," he said, voice stripped raw. "Please. Believe me. I didn't leave you. I didn't— I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Don't ruin me. Please."
The first thing that happened was silence. The second was a phone camera capturing Leon on his knees, eyes hollow and streaming, the man who had used me now begging. It was theater. It was tragedy. It was real.
A murmur rose, then a chorus. Some clapped. Some hissed. A woman near the back screamed, "Shame!" Others simply recorded. The laughter we had heard earlier curdled into the kind of satisfaction the world reserves for the fall of people who thought themselves untouchable.
Isabelle stepped back, face contorted between guilt and the calculation of self-preservation. A cluster of journalists rushed us. Handfuls of people recorded, some took pictures, and a stream of "did you see?" arrived online.
"Get up," Lucille said, voice brittle. She had lost her practiced poise. "Leon, get up."
"No," he said, raw. "Please, don't—"
"Why did you lie?" someone shouted.
"Why did you take her money?" demanded a man who had clapped Leon on the back in more comfortable times.
"I — I thought— I thought I was saving the company," Leon cried. "I thought I could have both. I thought—"
"Then you chose wrongly," I said. "You chose your lies."
Leon was suddenly smaller than any sentence I'd ever imagined. He tried to stand and failed. He tried to reach for me and only clutched at air. The board counsel arrived in a pair of efficient footsteps. People circled like vultures or like friends; the line was blurred. Some of Leon's allies stepped back. The CEO one rung above him cleared his throat and said very calmly, "This will be investigated. Legal teams are involved."
Leon looked around at the faces that had once reflected him and now reflected something he despised. His knuckles whitened. His mouth trembled. Then he started to beg.
"Please," he said. "Don't press charges. Don't press this. I will— I'll step down. I'll give you the shares. Please."
A woman near the stage recorded and shouted, "Kneel for your wife and give her the truth!" Someone else started to clap in slow time. Others filmed. The applause was not only derisive; it was the sound of a community holding him accountable.
He dropped his head. Lucille tried to compress him with her hand, like a mother trying to fix a broken toy. He rocked on the floor. We had the exact arc demanded by old spectacle: the arrogant man, the public unmasking, the denial, the collapse, the grovel.
He begged. The cameras loved it. I watched him bare his throat in a posture he had never offered me in private. He offered money and promises and the same salesman's patter he had used in our marriage.
"Please," he said again, and this time the sound of that single word made people shift in their seats. A man behind me said quietly, "We pay for people to be better than this. He owes you an explanation." Another whispered, "I want a transcript."
Isabelle left. She passed us with a look of victorious cowardice, which is to say she looked at me and then away. People followed. For the rest of the night the room hummed with replayed angles, replayed phrases, and the world outside the hall began to talk in a way it hadn't when he was still a polished statue.
When they finally helped him to his feet, he was pale and trembling. He had the look of a man who had been stripped of every plausible lie. He had moved through the stages I was taught to write about in the book I hadn't chosen to inhabit: the smugness, the confusion, the denial, the collapse, the pleading.
On the curb that night, cameras still rolling, people took pictures and shouted into the night. Someone posted the best angles online. The video's first virality happened before I had left the building.
People's reactions were simple and human: horror, the joy of a trap sprung, pity for a man who had loved his image more than his life, applause, calls for inquiries, a few who said, "She shouldn't have humiliated him," and even those who felt the narrative had been too public. But the essential chord struck was that truth is a social force; once a statement becomes a public thing, it is no longer the property of the liar.
Afterwards, when the flood of messages came — from tabloids, from family lawyers, from corporate counsels — I walked back into this house and took my ring off.
It had been jewelry, then promise, then a stone set against a finger that had been told to stay still. I put it in the small velvet box Blaise had given me that afternoon, the box I had bought for a simple, ridiculous reason: a gift costs less when your conscience is quiet. I locked the box and left it on the podium still warm from the microphones.
"Keep the ring," I told the empty room and the machines that had watched me think. "Keep the story. I keep the rest."
I slept that night with a quiet I had never known when I was living as a prop. The gala changed everything. The company moved to emergency meetings. Leon's name circulated with a new kind of punctuation. Lucille answered calls with a voice that had learned to sound smaller. Isabelle found it easy to disappear.
And me? I woke the next morning with an odd sense of property — not of things, but of choices. I had been a supporting character the author wrote so that the hero could flourish. I had been told to die small. I decided instead to live on the edge I could carve out in those final months and make that edge sharp enough to cut.
"What's next?" someone asked over the phone.
"Next," I said, "I get my life. I take the money that was mine to begin with. I give the rest where I think it will actually do some good."
I placed the ring in the drawer of my desk, not as a relic but as an emblem. If the book had tried to write me tiny, I would not let it. If it wanted to make a martyr, I'd return the favor and make a scandal.
There will be more hearings. There will be lawyers and posturing and a hundred different versions of who I was and what I meant. There will be people who say I was cruel and others who say I was finally honest. There will be headlines.
But tonight, I have a velvet box on my shelf and a city that has learned my name for reasons I chose, not reasons chosen for me. When I open the drawer, the ring is there, ordinary as a cloud on a winter morning. I let it sit a second, and then I lock the drawer.
"Not today," I say. The ring twinkles faintly. It always looks smaller outside a finger.
Tonight it is mine again in the sense that I decide its meaning.
The End
— Thank you for reading —