Chloe stepped down one porch stair, toward me.

“Pack your bags,” she said.

“This house has no room for a leech.”

A leech.

I looked at Luca while she said it, and he did not correct her, did not flinch, did not so much as glance away.

He simply watched, silently, while his mistress called me a leech and wore my dead mother’s earrings.

And I thought, in that moment, about the eleven years.

I thought about the nights I had spent editing medical transcripts until two in the morning, my eyes burning, so that Luca could build his consulting firm without the pressure of a second income to worry about.