Money did not save me.

It’s tempting to tell this story as if it did — as if the company and the secret house were the heroes, as if the lesson is simply that a woman should have her own money, which is true but is not the point.

Plenty of women with their own money stay in houses like the one I left.

What the money did was smaller and more precise than salvation: it unlocked a door that fear had jammed shut.

The leaving still had to be done by me, on foot, across a street, with my hands shaking-or-not and my heart deciding.

The money bought the option.