The wish to see him suffer would have meant some part of my life was still organized around him.

But I felt nothing, and nothing meant I was free — free in the complete way that only comes when a person who once defined your world shrinks, at last, to the size of a stranger across a street.

Conrad had spent our whole marriage certain that I was the small one, the quiet one, the dependent one who could not survive without him.

And here was the final proof of how wrong he had been: he was standing on a public sidewalk in a rumpled jacket, unable to look away from me, and I could barely hold his gaze for a full second before something more interesting drew my attention.

He had needed to ruin me to feel large.

I did not need him ruined at all.

I only needed him gone, and he was gone, and the ribbon was red and bright in the afternoon light, and I had a company to run.

THE END.