you mean?”
“I had money.”
I straightened my coat.
“That didn’t mean I could leave.”
“I loved you. That was why I stayed.”
He finally seemed to grasp that money and the freedom to leave aren’t the same thing. My inheritance had supplied choices; it hadn’t given me the courage to use them. That belonged to me alone. I stepped away.
“Goodbye, Aaron.”
“Goodbye, Claire.”
I left the restaurant without turning around. Eleven days later the divorce became official: signatures, the judge’s approval, paperwork, and emails. There was no dramatic
