Walking out had let me be the hero of a clean story.

The counseling made me the author of a messier one, a woman who had participated in her own diminishment for two years because she was afraid of not being chosen, and who had married a man whose weakness fit her fear like a key fits a lock.

Derek had his work and I had mine.

His was to learn to disappoint his family in order to protect his wife.

Mine was to learn that I did not have to purchase my place at any table, that belonging you have to keep buying is not belonging, and that the version of me that had laughed along at the walking-credit-card joke had not been generous or easygoing or kind.