I cried when I took my husband to the airport in Chicago because he was “leaving for two years to Seattle”, but when I returned home, I transferred $650,000 to my personal account and filed for divorce.
From the outside, my husband Matthew Ellison seemed like the perfect partner. He was responsible, attentive in public, and ambitious in a way that impressed our friends and business associates. People often told me that I was lucky to have married a man who appeared so stable and focused on building a future.
We lived in a large modern house in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. On weekends we usually walked to cafés near the lakefront, had long breakfasts, and sometimes spent afternoons strolling around Millennium Park while discussing our plans for investments and travel like any comfortable upper middle class couple living in the city.
When he told me that his company had offered him a position in Seattle, I was the first person to celebrate the news. I remember standing in the kitchen with a glass of wine while he explained the opportunity with excitement shining in his eyes.
“This is the step I’ve been waiting for,” Matthew said confidently. “Just two years, Brooke. After that we can expand our investments here in Chicago and maybe even launch our own company together.”
Two years apart sounded difficult, but I believed in our marriage and in the future we had been planning together.
During those two years I would stay in Chicago and manage everything we owned. That included several rental properties we had in Evanston and Naperville as well as our stock investments and other financial projects.
