I smoothed the wrinkles out of the cheap synthetic dress I had chosen on purpose that morning.

The smoggy afternoon air hit my face, and somehow it was cleaner than anything inside that house.

It surprised me, how light I felt.

I had expected grief, and the grief would come, but the first thing to arrive on that sidewalk was relief, and it took me a moment to understand why.

For two years I had been carrying a second self everywhere I went — a smaller, quieter, more apologetic woman named Adaeze who deferred and economized and let herself be spoken over.

I had built her carefully and I had inhabited her completely, and she had cost me more than I’d admitted even to myself.