“Don’t reply in anger.” I did not reply in anger.

I typed four words and nothing else. The wedding is canceled. Rebecca answered almost before I’d set the phone down. You have no idea what you just started. Outside, over Brooklyn, it had begun to rain.

I have kept those four words I typed, in a screenshot, though I never look at them without a strange mix of feelings. The wedding is canceled. For two years I had let a woman make every large decision in my life sound like her idea, until I could no longer tell where my own wants ended and her management of them began.

And here, at last, was a sentence that was entirely mine — four flat words, no apology, no softening, no anxious explanation of my reasons.