Everything worked out.” “I’m glad,” I said.

And I meant it, in a way he could not parse, because a woman who is genuinely glad to hear that her ex-husband is thriving is a woman who has clearly stopped needing him to fail, and that possibility did not exist in Marcus’s understanding of the world.

His expression tightened, because I was not angry, and my lack of anger unsettled him more than any fury could have.

And then he delivered the line.