I needed distance. I needed to let the poison do its own work.

I drove to my mother’s house in Oak Park. When I sat at her worn oak table and told her everything — the affair, the divorce, the sick twist with the father-in-law — she didn’t offer platitudes.

She listened, gripping her coffee mug until her knuckles were white. When I finally admitted I’d carried the stigma of infertility to protect Michael, she wept.

“You foolish, beautiful girl,” she said, pulling my head to her chest. “You broke your own back to carry a coward.”

That embrace was the release I needed. That evening, watching fireflies from her porch, my phone rang. It was David, the regional director at my firm.

Months ago he’d dangled a promotion managing a big coastal development branch in San Diego, and I’d turned it down, unwilling to uproot Michael.