My attorney knocked gently on the open door.

“You don’t have to carry everything out today, Jade.” I wiped my eyes and stood up straight.

“Yes, I do,” I said.

“I’m taking what’s mine, and I am never coming back to this house again.” I packed my clothes, my legal documents, and my grandmother’s letters.

I left everything else — the furniture I had paid for, the portrait I had dusted, the whole gilded museum of my own erasure — exactly where it stood.

None of it had ever really been mine.