So I would not be absent.

It is remarkable how much power there can be in simply refusing to disappear on cue.

Chapter 25 — The Dinner

The next evening, with Hazel safe and asleep in Clara’s care, I drove back to the apartment.

I did not go to fight, and I did not go to make a scene.

I went because a lie was being told about me, in my own home, to cover for a thing my husband had done, and I had decided I would no longer be quietly erased to protect him from the consequences of his own choices.

I let myself in with my key, wearing my ordinary casual clothes, and stepped inside.