I paused.
Ticket stubs.
Not work travel tickets. More theater tickets. Concert entries. Museum passes.
Dates scattered across months.
Not just occasional visits.
Regular ones.
She’d definitely been living here.
Not just visiting.
The realization settled slowly.
Rose hadn’t been flying around Europe for work.
She’d been coming back to Paris.
Again and again.
To this apartment.
To someone.
I swallowed, guilt pricking unexpectedly.
Had she been unhappy with Randy? Or just … different here? Free in a way she couldn’t be at home?
The thought hurt more than I expected.
Because I understood it.
The desire to slip into a version of yourself no one else knew. To choose something reckless and alive instead of safe and predictable.
My chest tightened.
Had she tried to tell me? Had I missed it?
I opened the final drawer.
And froze.
Photos.
A small stack, rubber-banded together.
Rose smiling on a bridge. Rose at a café table. Rose laughing, head thrown back.
Always in Paris.
Always happier than I’d seen her in years.
And in a few?—
A man.
