“So what happens now?”
“Now,” I said, “you go home. And if one day you ask instead of assume, we’ll talk.”
Edward opened his mouth, then closed it. He hugged me—awkward, unsure.
Brittany didn’t. They left. The door closed with that same confident click I’d noticed on move-in day.
That evening, I sat in the courtyard with a glass of iced tea, listening to the water, watching the sky soften. For the first time since my husband died, I didn’t feel like a placeholder in my own life. I wasn’t poor.
I wasn’t alone. I was finally unclaimed—and that, it turns out, is the most expensive freedom there is.
