Page 127 of Forever Gone

Carol’s gaze settled on her. “We knew each other in the only way that mattered.”

“What does that mean?”

“They gave advice.”

“So did you.”

“When I didn’t know better.”

The clock clicked through another second.

Carol folded both hands on the table. The right one stayed closer to her body.

"They told strangers how to live," she said. "Then they logged out and went back to their own homes. They never saw what happened afterward. What happened to their marriages and lives. Little earworms."

“They were trying to help.”

“They were smug.”

“You… You really hate them, Carol?”

Carol’s expression tightened. “I came to hate what they were. Women who made ruin sound like courage, then moved on before they had to see the damage.”

“Karen wasn’t smug.”

“You barely knew her.”

“I knew what she wrote in the group.”

Carol’s lips parted in something close to a smile. “Exactly.”

Deb felt cold along her arms despite the warmth in the room.

Carol’s voice changed. Restraint remained, but something beneath it had started pushing through.

“They spoke as though marriages were simple,” she said. “As though hesitation was only fear. As though mediation should be used to end things cleanly instead of trying to repair them. They said going back would surrender control.”

The phrases returned to Deb with painful clarity.

An old HearthSpace thread. MorningGlory44 uncertain whether to leave Andrew. Karen, Ruth, Linda, and Deb answering through the night.

Deb had written some of those words herself.

“You asked what we thought,” she said.

Carol’s fingers pressed into the tablecloth. “Asking didn’t give you the right to destroy my life.”

“No one forced you to do anything.”

“You all said the same thing.”

“We gave opinions. You chose mediation. You signed the papers.”

The object shifted beneath Carol’s blouse as her hand closed around it.

Deb kept her voice gentle. “Andrew’s remarriage wasn’t Karen’s fault. It wasn’t Ruth’s or Linda’s, and it wasn’t mine. Your marriage was already failing when you joined the group.”

For the first time that evening, anger broke cleanly across Carol’s expression.