Now, for the first time in over a decade, I am making a plan.
A plan for myself.
It is terrifying.
It is thrilling.
It is real.
Maeve told me to come to the café early tomorrow. She offered to pick me up, but I refused; I cannot let this world touchthat one. The car is Julian’s. The driver reports to Julian. If Maeve’s car pulls into the driveway, if a neighbor sees, if a word gets back to him—I cannot risk it. The two worlds must stay separate. The wife and the woman cannot meet.
From the café, we will go to her apartment. She said she would help me move, help me with the divorce, help me find my footing.
Help.
Four letters. One syllable. A word that implies a hand reaching down to lift you up. But I have never been lifted. I have only ever climbed, and fallen, and climbed again, my fingernails breaking against the rock.
Dangerous in its generosity.
That is what help feels like.
I shouldn’t trust this feeling.
I should be paralyzed by fear.
Iamafraid. I feel it in my hands as I scrub the pot. I feel it in my knees as I stand at the sink. I feel it in the space between my shoulder blades.
But underneath it… something else is stirring.
A single, fragile strand of hope.
I almost didn’t recognize it. It has been so long since I felt hope that I had forgotten its shape. It is the smallest, most vulnerable thing in the world, and it can be snuffed out by a single word, a single glance, a single door closing.
But it is there.
A thread I never knew I was strong enough to carry.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow, I leave.
Tomorrow, I start a different life.
I repeat the words like a mantra in my head as I stand at the sink, scrubbing a pot, playing my part one last time.
That’s when Julian enters.
I hear him before I see him. The soft pad of his feet on the tile. The way he pauses in the doorway, as if he is not sure he is welcome. The small, almost inaudible sigh that escapes his lips.
He leans against the counter, his gaze a tangible weight on my back.
“You… haven’t been using the car,” he says, his tone light. “I checked with the driver. He said you haven’t called him in months.”
For a single, heart-stopping second, my entire body locks.
The sponge is frozen in my hand. The water is still running. The pot is half-scrubbed.
I had been so careful.
