By the time the snow finally started sticking to the windshield, my husband had already decided I wasn’t family.

We were parked on a quiet side street in Chicago, engine running, heater humming. Out on the corner, a traffic light blinked red over a strip of frozen asphalt. Inside the car, it smelled like coffee and his cologne and the leather seats we still hadn’t finished paying off.

“Riley,” Alexander said, rubbing the bridge of his nose like he always did when I was about to be “difficult.” “You’re not going to Santorini.”

For a second the words didn’t make sense. They just floated there, like my brain was translating from a language I didn’t speak.

“The wedding,” I said slowly. “Your sister’s wedding. The one I just spent hours booking flights and hotels for. The one I paid seven thousand five hundred dollars for so your entire family could go.”

He flinched, barely. “It’s not personal,” he said. “It’s just… blood family only. With the venue capacity and Thomas’s family being Greek Orthodox, they’re being really traditional. It’s complicated.”

He kept talking, but all I could hear was the math.

Seven tickets. Seven hotel rooms. Eight people.

His parents. His aunt. His cousin and his girlfriend. Norah. Her fiancé. Alexander.

Not me.

“Let me make sure I understand,” I said. My voice came out calm, controlled, the way it does right before a glass cracks in your hand. “I paid for your parents to go. I paid for your aunt. I paid for your cousin and his girlfriend. I paid for Norah and Thomas. I paid for you.”

I turned to look at him. “But I’m not going.”

He blew out a breath and stared through the fogging windshield like the answer might be written on the snow.

“I was going to tell you earlier,” he said. “The timing just never felt right. And you’ve been really stressed. I thought maybe you’d appreciate a break. A week to yourself. I’ll book you a spa package. My treat.”

My treat. With my money.

That’s when I started laughing.

The sound was sharp and wrong in the small space of the car, like something broken rattling around. Alexander’s expression shifted from defensive to annoyed to almost concerned.

“Riley, come on,” he said. “Don’t be dramatic.”

That word snapped something in me.

Dramatic. I had just learned I’d bankrolled my own exclusion from a family event, and somehow I was the one overreacting.

“Stop the car,” I said.

“We’re parked,” he muttered.

“Then stop talking to me like I’m a problem you’re managing.” I swallowed, tasted metal. “You deliberately excluded your wife from your sister’s wedding. You let me book it, plan it, pay for it, while you already knew I wasn’t going. That’s not complicated, Alexander. That’s cruel.”

His jaw tightened. “That’s not fair. It wasn’t like that.”

“How was it?” I asked. “Explain to me how deliberately leaving your wife off a guest list she paid for is anything but exactly what it looks like.”

He didn’t answer. The silence stretched between us until I could feel it in my teeth.

“When were you planning to tell me?” I asked. “At O’Hare? When I showed up without a ticket? Or were you going to text me from Greece and tell me to enjoy my spa day?”

He stared at the dashboard. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I kept thinking I’d find the right time.”

“There is no right time to say, ‘Hey, surprise, I used your money to send my entire family to Europe and you’re the only one not invited.’”

“You’re being—”

“If you say dramatic again,” I said quietly, “I swear to you, I will open this door and walk home in a blizzard.”

His mouth snapped shut.

I opened the door anyway. Cold air slapped my face, snow flakes sticking in my hair, melting where they hit the heat still trapped in my coat. Behind me, I heard him say my name, but I was already walking away, pulling my phone out with numb fingers.

Can you come get me? I texted my best friend. I’ll send you my location. I can’t be in this car with him.

On my screen, three dots appeared almost immediately.

On my way. Don’t move.

I stood under a streetlight, Chicago snow falling in heavy, wet clumps, and watched my husband’s car idle at the curb. After a minute, he drove off, taillights bleeding red through the white.

My hands were shaking so hard I almost dropped my phone. Twelve years of marriage, twelve years of supporting this man through law school, bar exams, failed job interviews, family drama, loans and late nights—and I had just found out he was capable of this level of casual cruelty.

And in the back of my mind, a thin, cold thought slid in: If he could lie about this, what else had he been lying about?

By the time Clare’s Honda pulled up, my feet were numb and I couldn’t feel my face.

She didn’t say anything when I got in. Just reached over and turned up the heater, eyes never leaving the road.

“What did he do?” she asked finally as we merged onto Lake Shore Drive, the city lights smeared across the frozen lake.

I told her.

Thanksgiving at his parents’ place in Evanston, the smell of turkey and resentment thick in the air. Norah in the kitchen, cheeks pink from wine, telling me how excited she was for “all eight of us” to be in Santorini together. Her fingers counting off names. Mom, Dad, Aunt Patricia, Cousin James and his girlfriend, me and Thomas, you and Alexander.

Eight.

My brain had snagged on that number, the way it does on a word you suddenly forget how to spell. I’d booked seven flights. Seven rooms.

“Maybe I miscounted,” I’d said, forcing a laugh I didn’t feel. But that tightness in Norah’s eyes when she’d asked if I was sure I was on the reservation—that stuck.

The way Alexander had brushed me off when I tried to talk about it in the car home. Kind of in the middle of something, Riley. Can it wait?

It had waited through dessert, through the drive, through the moment in that parked car when my marriage suddenly looked different from the inside.

Now, in Clare’s guest room in Wrigleyville, surrounded by mismatched furniture and the hum of her old radiator, I opened my laptop and our joint bank account.

There it was, clear as a headline: $7,500 to a travel agency in October. I found the email confirmation from the hotel in Santorini—seven guests, seven rooms—booked under my name. I’d even added notes: ocean views for his parents, ground floor for his aunt’s bad knee, connecting rooms for Norah and her fiancé.

I’d done what I always did: made everyone else comfortable.

My phone buzzed. A text from Alexander.

Come home so we can talk like adults.

I turned the phone face down.

Instead, I opened his email.

We’d shared passwords years ago, in a flush of early-marriage trust. Married people don’t keep secrets, he’d said back then, laughing. I’d handed over everything without a second thought. I hadn’t logged into his accounts in years.

Tonight, I typed in his address and password and hit enter.

The inbox was a flood of case updates, court notices, firm memos. I typed “Santorini” into the search bar.

Three threads popped up.

The first was between Alexander and his mother. Dated in August. Months ago.

Mom, have you told Riley about the Santorini situation? he’d written.

Not yet, Eleanor replied. You can’t just spring this on her last minute. That would be cruel.

Cruel. Her word, not mine.

It’s Norah’s wedding, he wrote back. Blood relatives only. Riley will understand. She’s been so clingy lately. A week apart will be good for us.

Clingy.

I read it twice, three times, until the word blurred.

Then another thread. This time with Norah.

Can you back me up on the venue capacity thing? he’d asked her in September. Riley’s going to be upset.

Alex, this is your mess, she’d replied. I never said partners couldn’t come. Don’t put this on me or Thomas’s family.

No strict guest list. No “Greek Orthodox tradition” banning spouses. Just my husband, inventing rules to get what he wanted.

For the first time since the snow, I felt something like clarity.

If he was lying about the wedding, what else?

I typed another word into search.

Vanessa.

Nothing.

Then I remembered we’d synced our phones to the same cloud account to share photos a long time ago. A convenience. A safety measure. Another thing he’d probably stopped thinking about.

I pulled up the backup and scrolled until I found a text thread labeled “VP.”

The first message I opened might as well have been a grenade.

So she actually paid for everyone’s tickets? VP had written.

I stared at the three letters. Initials. No name. It didn’t matter. I knew.

Alexander had replied: I know. I feel bad… but this gives us the whole week.

A week.

In Santorini.

Without me.

My vision blurred, hands trembling as I scrolled.

Five days in Greece without her even knowing. You’re terrible, she’d replied.

You love it, he’d sent back. Besides, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.

After we can figure out the divorce situation.

Divorce.

I wasn’t sophisticated. I wasn’t ambitious. I was “useful,” he’d told her in another thread I found.

Riley’s good at keeping my finances stable, he’d typed. Once I make partner, I’ll be in a better position to end things.

The story came together in pieces: hotel receipts billed as continuing education weekends, dinners he’d called “client meetings” that were really dates, nights he’d worked late that matched up to location pings from a River North apartment building.

Vanessa Pierce. Twenty-eight, according to the firm’s website I Googled with numb fingers. Blonde. Junior associate. Smiling in her corporate headshot like she’d never done a wrong thing in her life.

They’d been seeing each other for eight months.

I didn’t cry.

I thought I might. I thought I’d collapse on Clare’s couch and sob until I couldn’t breathe.

Instead, I opened a spreadsheet.

By sunrise, I had three folders and a plan.

One folder for emails. One for text messages and screenshots. One for bank statements and credit card charges highlighted in yellow. Every dinner, every hotel, every “work trip” that had actually been a weekend with her.

In the spreadsheet, I made a timeline: dates, locations, dollar amounts. Next to that, I started another column and typed out something I hadn’t let myself say out loud yet:

What this is going to cost him.

“You look… scary,” Clare said gently at seven a.m., standing in her kitchen doorway with a mug of coffee.

“I’m documenting,” I said, my voice flat. “If he wants Santorini with his mistress, he can have it. I’m going to pay for his vacation.”

She blinked. “Riley—”

“And then,” I said, feeling something cold and focused lock into place, “I’m going to make sure he pays for everything else.”

For the next few months, I became an actress in my own life.

At home, I was calm. Gentle. Reasonable. I told Alexander I’d “overreacted” in the car. That maybe he was right—maybe some time alone would be good for me. I told him I’d use the week to catch up on design work. Maybe book that spa day he’d suggested.

The relief on his face was almost pathetic.

“Thank you,” he said, kissing my forehead, voice warm with the kind of gratitude you give a babysitter who stayed late. “I knew you’d understand. You always do.”

I wanted to tell him I understood perfectly. Instead, I smiled and refilled his wine.

While he thought I’d forgiven him, I opened a new bank account in my own name. Quietly, strategically, I started moving money.

Not his. Mine.

When we’d married, I was the one with income. My “little graphic design hobby” had paid his bar prep, part of law school, half his suits, the entire down payment on our Lincoln Park apartment, six months of mortgage when he’d been between firms. I’d kept receipts, tax returns, invoices. Now I did the math.

Over twelve years, my work had supported him far more than he realized. Or maybe exactly as much as he realized and chose to ignore.

So I moved money slowly—two thousand here, three thousand there—small transfers spaced out between electric bills and grocery runs. By January, forty thousand dollars that my work had earned sat in an account he didn’t know existed.

In December, I spent one of his “late nights at the office” touring a tiny studio in Wicker Park. High ceilings, creaky hardwood floors, sunlight that spilled in through huge windows. Not fancy. Not Instagram-perfect. But when I stood in the empty room, I could picture my life there. My things. My rules.

“When would you want to move in?” the landlord asked.

“June first,” I said, thinking of Alexander’s flight dates. He’d leave for Santorini in mid-May and be gone for a week.

Perfect.

I signed the lease. Paid the deposit with my own card.

Then I called a lawyer.

The elevator to Simone Blackwell’s office opened into a wall of glass overlooking downtown Chicago. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Very “serious attorney in a legal drama” energy.

Simone was all sharp angles and quiet focus, with a kind smile that didn’t quite soften the impression that she could destroy someone in court before lunch and still make yoga by six.

I laid the binders on her desk. Bank statements. Emails. Screenshots. The spreadsheet.

“Your husband,” she said, flipping through the pages, “is what we in the profession would call ‘a walking case study in bad decisions.’”

“I want a divorce,” I said. “But I want to do it in a way he never forgets.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You’re not looking for payback. You’re looking for accountability.”

I thought about it. “Yes. I want him to understand that actions have consequences. Real ones.”

She nodded. “Illinois recognizes fault-based grounds. We can file based on adultery and financial misconduct. Given what you’ve brought me, this is… comprehensive.”

We spent three hours going through strategy. Property division. Spousal support. How to handle the fact that he’d used marital funds to pay for an affair and a vacation he deliberately excluded me from.

“He’s up for partnership, right?” she asked.

“Always,” I said dryly. “Every year is the partnership year. Kind of like how every year is ‘our last year renting’ but somehow we still have a landlord.”

“Partnership is leverage,” she said. “He has a lot to lose. Use that.”

So I did.

A week later, I made another call. This one to his firm.

“I need to speak with the managing partner,” I told the receptionist. “It’s about an ethics issue involving one of your associates.”

“Name?” she asked.

“Alexander Thornton.”

I was transferred twice before a deep voice said, “This is Richard Caldwell.”

“Mr. Caldwell,” I said, “my name is Riley. I’m Alexander’s wife.”

He was polite. Careful. Curious.

I stayed calm and factual. I told him I had documentation suggesting that some expenses billed to clients—dinners, hotels, “research trips”—weren’t actually work-related. That they matched up with my husband’s affair.

“I’m not calling to ruin his career,” I said. “I just thought a firm like yours, with your reputation, would want to know.”

The pause on the line was long enough to confirm I’d hit the right nerve.

“Thank you for bringing this to our attention, Mrs. Thornton,” he said finally. “We take these matters very seriously.”

I hung up and sat at our marble kitchen island—the same one Alexander had insisted we “needed” even when we couldn’t afford it—and watched the afternoon light slide across the surface.

He wanted me quiet. He wanted me compliant.

He had no idea I was already gone.

The night before his flight, I made reservations at a Michelin-star restaurant in the West Loop. Full tasting menu, wine pairing, the whole thing. The kind of place we’d only gone to once, for our fifth anniversary.

“Riley, that’s expensive,” he said when I told him. “You sure we shouldn’t save…?”

“It’s a special occasion,” I said, smiling. “Your sister’s wedding. One last nice dinner before you go.”

It was almost funny, watching him worry about my spending when he’d just charged a hidden credit card three thousand two hundred dollars for a suite in Santorini under a fake name.

We sat under soft lights while servers brought course after course like art installations: tiny perfect bites, edible smoke, dessert that arrived in a cloud of cold vapor. Alexander kept checking his phone under the table, texting fast. I didn’t have to ask who.

“Are you really okay with not coming?” he asked between courses, putting on his best concerned-husband face. “I know it’s not ideal.”

“I’m exactly where I need to be,” I said.

He heard what he wanted to hear. Relief softened his shoulders.

“I’m glad,” he said. “I didn’t… I just didn’t want this to cause a huge thing.”

A huge thing. Right.

Outside, the May air was soft and warm as we walked back to the car. He slipped his arm around my shoulders, and I let him.

One last performance.

At three forty-five the next morning, his alarm went off. I got up too, making coffee, double-checking his passport, watching him pack his carry-on with the efficiency of a man who’d traveled often for work and never for vacation with his wife.

At the door, he kissed my forehead.

“I’ll miss you,” he said. “Try to relax this week. Book that spa day.”

“Have an amazing time,” I said. “Give everyone my love.”

The elevator doors closed between us.

At four a.m., our marriage ended. At five a.m., my new life started.

At nine, the movers arrived.

They were efficient, quiet, used to people starting over. I’d labeled boxes for weeks in my head. Take. Leave. Mine. His.

My grandmother’s antique desk. My design equipment. My books. My clothes. Gone into the truck.

The marble island. The couch he’d chosen because it “looked like success.” The bed I no longer wanted to sleep in. Those stayed.

On the island, in the center where the light hit just right, I placed my wedding ring.

Next to it, I laid a thick envelope.

On top, a handwritten letter.

By the time you read this, I wrote, you’ll be back from Santorini. I hope you enjoyed your trip. I paid for it, after all.

Inside the envelope were the divorce papers Simone had filed at nine that morning in Cook County. Bank statements with my contributions highlighted. Screenshots of texts. Copies of emails. Enough to draw a very clear picture.

I told him I’d contacted his firm about the expense billing. I told him I’d only taken what was mine, supported by receipts. I told him I’d canceled his return flight.

It seemed wasteful to pay for it twice.

Don’t contact me, I wrote at the end. Don’t come looking for me. Talk to your lawyer. Talk to your therapist. Talk to whoever you need to.

You made your choices.

Now live with them.

I placed my apartment keys on the letter and stepped back. Ring. Keys. Envelope. Marble.

Symbolic. Dramatic. Maybe a little cinematic.

Felt right.

Then I walked out of the life I’d spent twelve years holding together and didn’t look back.

My new studio in Wicker Park smelled like fresh paint and possibility. The first night, I didn’t sleep much. Every sound was new: the bus brakes outside, the couple arguing across the hall, the building’s ancient pipes knocking like distant footsteps.

Sometime around two a.m., my phone buzzed with a voicemail from an international number.

I pressed play.

“Riley, what did you do?” Alexander’s voice snapped through the speaker, sharper than I’d ever heard it. “My firm called. There’s an investigation. Vanessa is freaking out. You took half our savings. You can’t just—”

The message cut off at the time limit. I listened to it twice. The panic under the anger was almost louder than his words.

Then I deleted it.

When Simone called two days later, she sounded almost cheerful.

“The firm moved fast,” she said. “They found a pattern of expenses billed to clients that shouldn’t have been. Dinners for two, hotel rooms in cities where he had no court dates, weekend trips that magically line up with his and Vanessa’s calendars.”

“So he wasn’t just cheating on me,” I said. “He was cheating his clients.”

“Pretty much. They put him on administrative leave. He’s not fired—yet. But partnership?” She made a little sound that said that ship had sunk.

Norah texted from Santorini a few days after the wedding. The photo she sent was ridiculously beautiful: white buildings spilling down volcanic cliffs, blue sea fading into lighter blue sky. A postcard.

My wedding day and I can barely look at my brother, she wrote. He spent the whole week on his phone dealing with his firm, snapping at everyone. Mom is furious. Dad won’t even speak to him. And Vanessa came. Did you know about her? I wish you were here instead of them.

I stared at the screen, feeling something sharp and sad twist in my chest. Not guilt. Just… grief for what her day could have been.

I’m sorry your day was affected, I wrote back. But Alexander did that. Not me. You still married Thomas. You still deserve to be happy. Hold on to that.

She replied: Our family will never be the same. He’s lost everyone’s respect. Even Mom can’t defend him now.

He’d tried to keep his world intact by pushing me out. Instead, he blew a crater right through the middle of it.

Summer in Chicago arrived the way it always does, all at once. The lake thawed, patios opened, and the city shook off winter like a bad dream.

In my studio, life settled into a new rhythm.

My client list grew. Word of mouth spread faster than any marketing campaign. The boutique hotel in Milwaukee hired me to rebrand their entire chain. A tech startup in the Loop wanted a full visual identity refresh before their next funding round. A nonprofit asked me to design a campaign for literacy programs.

I raised my rates to match the quality of my work instead of discounting everything to make my husband feel like he was still the main provider. Clients didn’t blink. They signed.

I hired an assistant—Maya, fresh out of design school, brilliant and hungry and unashamed of it. We rented a small studio space three blocks away. Exposed brick, big table, mismatched chairs, excellent light.

For the first time in years, when people asked what I did, I said, “I run a design studio,” instead of “Oh, I just do freelance stuff on the side.”

Clare pushed me into therapy, and she was right to.

Dr. Chen’s office smelled like tea and old books. She had this calm way of asking questions that made you hear things you’d said a hundred times in a completely new light.

“You’re angry,” she said halfway through our second session.

“I think I’m entitled,” I said. “He lied. For months. He called me clingy while I was paying his loans. He told another woman I was useful, like I was a 401(k, not a person.”

“You are absolutely entitled to anger,” she said. “I just want to make sure it doesn’t set up permanent residence.”

We unpacked twelve years of micro-cuts. The way he’d turned every financial sacrifice into “our decision” but every success into his achievement. The way he’d minimized my work, called it my “little thing,” while quietly relying on the money it brought in.

“You didn’t miss red flags,” Dr. Chen said once when I started blaming myself. “You trusted your partner. That’s not a flaw. That’s what a healthy person does in a healthy relationship. The dishonesty was his choice, not your failure to detect it.”

Some days, the anger softened into sadness. Other days, it burned hotter. Little by little, it cooled into something else: resolve.

I went to the Art Institute alone one Sunday—something Alexander had always rolled his eyes at. “We’ve seen it,” he’d used to say. “How many paintings do you need?”

Turns out, a lot.

I stood in front of the stained-glass windows and didn’t notice someone step beside me until they bumped my elbow.

“Sorry,” a man said. “I got swallowed by the blue.”

He was maybe early forties, maybe my age, with tired eyes and an architect’s black-rimmed glasses. We started talking about light and color and how buildings can feel kind or harsh.

His name was Julian. From Toronto. Divorced. In town for a conference.

He asked if I wanted to grab coffee. I said yes.

It wasn’t a big cinematic moment. Just two people, talking about design and cities, laughing quietly at the same jokes. When he asked for my number, I surprised myself by giving it.

“I’m not sure I’m ready for… anything,” I said, suddenly aware I hadn’t flirted with anyone but my ex-husband since college.

He smiled. “That’s okay. I’m not sure I am either. We can start with being two people who like talking about windows.”

We texted sometimes after he flew home. Nothing intense. Memes about strange buildings. Photos of street art. It was enough to remind me that my ability to connect with someone hadn’t died in a snowbank with my marriage.

The divorce became official on a sticky July morning.

Simone called while I was adjusting the curves on a logo for a restaurant in Logan Square.

“It’s done,” she said. “The judge signed. You’re free.”

I expected fireworks inside my chest. Or at least a tear or two. Instead, I felt… steady. Like a book had closed with the right sentence on the last page.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Alexander’s attorney wanted me to tell you he thinks the terms are harsh,” she said, dry. “I told him they’re proportionate.”

Later that week, Clare told me what she’d heard through the grapevine.

“He’s still at the firm,” she said, “but it’s over for him there. No partnership. Salary cut. Mandatory ethics training. And apparently, half the older partners won’t even sit with him at lunch.”

“Vanessa?” I asked.

“Transferred to Boston,” she said. “Let’s just say the move wasn’t exactly optional.”

I waited for satisfaction to rush in, for vindication to taste sweet and sharp.

It didn’t. It was just… information. His life. Not mine.

I saw his mother in Whole Foods one afternoon, standing in front of the pasta shelves, squinting at labels like they might bite her.

“Riley,” she said when she saw me, clutching her basket with both hands. “I owe you an apology.”

It would have been so easy to be cruel. To remind her of twelve years of backhanded comments about my “little design hobby,” about my family never quite measuring up, about the children we hadn’t had yet because “Alexander has a career to build.”

But she looked smaller, somehow. And genuinely ashamed.

“I knew,” she said. “About Santorini. Not about… everything. But I knew he wasn’t taking you. I told him it was wrong. I told him he couldn’t let you pay. And then I… stayed quiet. I kept thinking he’d fix it.”

Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes.

“He didn’t deserve you,” she said. “Not for a single day of those twelve years.”

“Thank you for saying that,” I said softly.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I’m good,” I said, and realized it was true. “Better than I’ve been in a long time.”

She nodded, shoulders sagging with relief.

“Alexander is not,” she said bluntly. “But that’s his own doing. You take care of yourself, Riley. You were the best thing that ever happened to him. He just figured it out too late.”

We parted between the rigatoni and the fusilli.

I met Norah for coffee a few times after that. At first it was awkward, the way sitting across from someone who used to be “in-law” but is now… what? can be. But she was older now, married, a little more jaded, a lot more clear-eyed.

“Our family is different now,” she said once, fiddling with her cup sleeve. “Holidays are weird. Dad won’t say his name. Mom cries every time someone mentions Santorini. Aunt Patricia calls him ‘that nephew I used to have.’”

“I’m sorry,” I said automatically.

“Don’t be,” she said, voice firm. “He did this. Not you. You just refused to quietly take it.”

She was right. Saying it out loud helped.

As summer started to slide into fall, the air in Chicago shifted. The lake wind turned sharper. Leaves along the side streets went from green to gold.

I realized one morning, sitting by my window with my espresso, that it had been almost exactly one year since Norah had dropped the phrase “destination wedding” into our kitchen, since Alexander had forwarded me her email with a one-line note: Can you handle bookings? Swamped.

A year since I’d been the version of myself who reflexively said yes, who picked up every slack, who assumed her husband was fundamentally on her side.

I thought about that Riley a lot. Standing at the marble island she hadn’t wanted, trusting that her life was solid.

If I could go back and warn her, would I?

I didn’t know.

That life had been slowly hollowing me out in ways I hadn’t seen. I’d been shrinking to fit around someone else’s ambition, dimming myself so his light looked brighter.

The woman I’d become—the one whose name was on the lease, whose business paid her mortgage, who spent Saturdays at the farmers’ market instead of waiting for a husband to get home from “drinks with the guys”—felt more like me than I’d ever felt.

“Morning,” my phone buzzed. Julian again. Thinking about you. Coffee later?

I smiled.

Make it dinner, I typed back. I know a place you’ll love.

The marble island was someone else’s problem in some other condo in a neighborhood I no longer lived in. Maybe Alexander sat at it sometimes and thought about the letter I’d left. Maybe he stacked takeout containers on it while scrolling through job postings.

Maybe he told himself a story where he was the one who’d been wronged.

I didn’t care.

What I cared about was the email open on my laptop—a new project for a women’s shelter in the city, asking for a full rebrand to help them reach more people. Work with meaning. Clients who valued me for what I created, not for how much of myself I was willing to give away for free.

I’d once paid for a trip I wasn’t invited to.

In return, I got my life back.

Best deal I’ve ever made.