Almost an hour had passed when my phone started vibrating inside my pocket. My battery was at one percent when I got a message from Kyle saying, “Don’t be angry, baby. This is all just a joke for our YouTube channel. We will be back.”
And then the phone screen went blank before I could even reply.
This man, who I gave everything to, thought my panic was good content to post online for strangers.
I was just done.
An old van pulled up to the pumps on the far side of the lot. A woman got out, stretched, and started pumping gas. Looking at her, it hit me: I didn’t need Kyle anymore.
I took the SIM card out of my dead phone, snapped it in half, and tossed it into the trash can by the door. Then I took a breath and walked over to her.
If it made them happy to make a video about me disappearing, then fine. I was going to give them their money’s worth. I didn’t realize then that walking out of my marriage would start a domino effect that would bring down Kyle’s whole world.
I walked up to the lady with the minivan and asked if she was heading anywhere near a bigger town. Her name was Martha, and she was driving to see her daughter three states over. I told her what my husband did, and she didn’t grill me with a million questions, she just opened the door and handed me a bottle of water from the back.
Two hours later, when Kyle and his brothers pulled back into the gas station expecting to film my tearful reaction for their followers, I was already seventy miles down the highway.
What Kyle didn’t realize was that when he drove off with my purse, he trapped his whole company. As the only operations manager for his family’s logistics business, I handled all the contracts, payroll, and permits. My name was on every main account, and the SIM card I’d just snapped in half was the two-factor authentication key for the entire business. He had my purse, but without me, he was locked out of everything.
