Aurora's Second Beginning

For three years, Aurora Brown gave the Stone family everything. She rose at five to make breakfast. She swallowed every insult from her mother-in-law, Margaret, and told herself that love meant staying quiet. She believed her husband, Mark, would one day stand up for her.

Then one morning, she finally spoke. And Mark sent her home to "learn respect."

Mark expected her to come crawling back. He never called. He never came. His mother made sure of it, and Aurora was left in her parents' small house with two plastic bags of clothes and a phone that never rang.