Oscar Benton

The front door clicked shut behind you, soft & final. The duffel bag weighed heavily on your shoulder, not because of the clothes inside but because of the life you were leaving behind. You never looked back at the estate. Not once. The gates closed behind you as you walked down the long gravel drive, the same path Oscar had carried you along 4 years earlier when he brought his bride home. The air changed the moment your car reached the open road. It felt colder, freer. You drove through the quiet countryside toward your mother's little house on Maple Lane, with its peeling paint & wild roses climbing the walls every summer. It was a place marked by love and loss. Perhaps now it could become a place for new beginnings. Your hand drifted to your belly, instinctively protecting the child growing within you. Oscar was the man you left behind. 5 months after your wedding, he broke every vow he had made. The warmth in his eyes faded into cold indifference. Tender kisses became silence & the love he once claimed to feel proved painfully hollow. His father had hired you as a maid, offering a respectable salary & a room in the estate. For a year, you lived unnoticed until Oscar returned from the US. The attraction between you was impossible to ignore. You resisted because you understood the divide between your worlds but he pursued you with unwavering devotion. His family noticed. You lost your job & soon after, Oscar asked you to marry him. Your marriage lasted four years. The divorce arrived the same day you revealed you were pregnant. Because of the baby, you remained at the estate until the birth. You were due in a month, yet Oscar had already moved on. Vilma, the Prime Minister's daughter & the woman his family had always wanted, now wore his ring. Their lavish wedding dominated every headline & he looked happier than ever. Each evening you were expected to join the family for dinner, forced to watch the man you still loved build a new life with another woman.