The coldness, the disappearing, the texts about milk, the slow erasure of me from his life, all of it had finally worn through my trust to the suspicious, capable woman underneath, the one who had existed before I ever met him.

He had spent two years assuming I would never look, while doing the precise things most guaranteed to make me start.

His contempt was not just cruel.

It was, in the end, the exact instrument of his undoing.

Chapter 25 — A Life of My Own

The large house in Evanston, the one I had once believed was my home, was sold.

And with my half of the proceeds, I bought something smaller and brighter and entirely mine: a three-bedroom townhouse closer to my new office, full of light, with a little balcony that caught the morning sun.