Percival had been performing for the entire length of our relationship; the warm attentive man at the altar was as fake as the antique-stuffed house, a role played by a predator to secure his asset.

Every sincere moment I thought we had shared had been him acting.

So walking the aisle as an act of theater was not me betraying something real.

It was me, for the first time, matching his performance with one of my own — meeting a liar with a lie, but a lie in the service of truth rather than the concealment of it.

I looked at his handsome practiced smile and felt the last thread of grief let go, because you cannot mourn a person who was never there, and the man at that altar had never been there.

There was only ever the role, and the predator playing it, and the asset he thought he was about to acquire.