Chapter 7 - The Blame Game
With the cars gone, the country club membership revoked, and the kids enrolled in the local public school, the walls of the Oak Park house felt like a prison.
The stress fractured Matthew and Sarah’s marriage with violent speed. The superficial foundation it was built upon completely disintegrated.
One evening, an argument over a past-due electric bill escalated into a screaming match that shook the windows.
"I wasted my youth on you!" Sarah yelled, throwing a vase against the wall, where it shattered into a hundred pieces. "My parents warned me! They said you were new money, but you aren't even that! You're no money! You're a fraud who lived off his mommy's allowance!"
"And what are you?!" Matthew roared back, his face red with rage. "You never worked a day in your life! You spent fifty thousand dollars a year on clothes and vacations while I begged my mother to keep the lights on! You were perfectly happy taking her money while treating her like trash!"
"She is trash!" Sarah spat. "And so are you!"
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Sarah packed three designer suitcases, called an Uber, and took the children to her parents' house. She filed for divorce two days later, citing "irreconcilable differences" and demanding sole custody.
Matthew was left entirely alone in a five-bedroom house that was scheduled for a foreclosure auction in less than thirty days.
