“It’s not about the money, Christopher,” she said coldly from the door, suitcase in hand.

“It’s the scale of the lie.

You let that woman sacrifice everything so you could play at being a success.

You’re not a CEO.

You’re a parasite.” And she left without looking back.

I have thought about that word Melanie chose — parasite — because it was cruel, and accurate, and it revealed something about her that I found, in a bleak way, almost clarifying.

Melanie left Christopher not because of what he had done to me; my seven years of erased sacrifice meant nothing to her, and she never spared me a thought.