I didn’t know.

At sunrise I loaded my pickup with the things that were clearly mine. My tools. My clothes. Three boxes of books Helen never cared about. My drafting table — Bradley had called it “too ugly to stage around.”

A metal lockbox of work records. The wedding photo. By noon I sat in the driveway with the engine idling, staring at the front window where Helen used to stand with her coffee while I mowed the lawn.

Bradley stood on the porch scrolling through his phone. He never looked up.

The drive to Clearwater Beach took a little over two hours. The farther south I went, the softer the land became — strip malls giving way to causeways, blue water, bait shops, seafood shacks, stucco homes, palm trees bending over parking lots, tourists driving as if the ocean itself had confused them.

I kept the windows cracked, letting the salt air fill the truck.