But she had seen it, and she had gone, and I could hardly blame her for the leaving when I was doing exactly the same thing.

Two women leaving the same man in the same season, for the same reason underneath all the differences, which was that neither of us, in the end, was willing to keep living inside a story he had made up.

Chloe left because the money went.

I left because the truth came.

But we were both, that autumn, only walking out of the same beautiful, false room, and closing the same door behind us.

I felt, watching all of this from a distance, no particular triumph.