The locket had gone to a private collector, he said, but he was still looking.

She held the ring and the bracelet with trembling hands, and thanked him, and when he asked if it changed things, she said, gently, that what it changed was that he had finally done a right thing — but it didn’t erase the old ones.

She did not take him back.

There were nights she wrestled with guilt, remembering the attentive man he’d been early on, wondering if she was being too hard.

But when she talked to her mother, her mother never told her to divorce him; she only asked whether Odalind could ever really trust him again without watching his phone, his accounts, his family — and the question answered itself.

Therapy taught her that a boundary is not a punishment; it is a wall you build around your own wellbeing.