Lahat ng Kabanata ng FORSAKEN WIFE, NOW A BILLIONAIRE'S GREATEST REGRET: Kabanata 111 - Kabanata 120

The decision to speak at the school sat with me for days, a pebble in my shoe of contentment. It wasn't fear, exactly. More a profound sense of uncertainty. What did Gwen Gonzalez, retired from everything, have to say to a roomful of teenagers staring down the dizzying aperture of their own futures?I found myself standing before my closet, staring at a row of elegant, severe suits—the armor of my old life. They whispered of courtrooms and boardrooms. I pushed them aside and found a simple, soft sweater the color of sea fog and a pair of comfortable trousers. This wasn't a performance. It was a conversation.The morning of the talk, Arthur was uncharacteristically buzzing around the kitchen. "Do you have notes?" he asked, pouring me a third cup of coffee I didn't need."No notes," I said, taking a steadying sip. "Just the sea-glass.""Right, right. The metaphor. Very good." He fussed with his own collar. "I was thinking of coming. For moral support. And to ensure no one asks any imper

The Smooth Sailing became the third resident of our cove, a stubborn, fiberglass testament to our stubbornness. We didn't conquer the open sea. We mastered the fifty-yard journey to the buoy and back, and that felt like a triumph worthy of Magellan. The real adventure, it turned out, wasn't navigation, but the maintenance. The boat was a relentless teacher of humility.I was on my knees on the dock one Saturday morning, engaged in a bitter struggle with a particularly malevolent stain on the deck—possibly ancient fish blood, possibly the life essence of a long-dead marine poltergeist. Arthur was upside down in the engine well, muttering curses that were inventively nautical."The carburetor," his muffled voice announced, "is held together by what appears to be fossilized barnacle glue and spite.""Use your words, dear," I called back, scrubbing furiously. "Is that a technical term? 'Spite'?"He wriggled out, his face smeared with a new substance. "It's the primary bonding agent on any

The Smooth Sailing’s fairy-lit dinners became a weekly ritual. We’d putter out, drop anchor, and argue over the merits of gummy bears in chicken salad (Arthur’s culinary abomination) while the sky turned to ink and the stars punched through. It was our movable feast, a tiny island of light and nonsense in the dark sea.The mentorship, however, was proving less serene. My students, having decided I was neither a threat nor a bore, had moved into the phase of treating me like a particularly complex lab specimen.“So, Mrs. G,” Leo said, leaning back in his chair during our third session. He’d dubbed me ‘Mrs. G,’ which felt both irreverent and weirdly affectionate. “You built this whole foundation, right? To, like, cleanse your karmic slate after the whole… pier thing?”Anya shot him a look. “It’s not karmic slate, it’s restorative justice through philanthropic infrastructure.”“Same diff,” Leo shrugged. “But wasn’t that just, like, super expensive guilt? Couldn’t you have just donated to

The tenant case for Rosa became my secret project. I worked on it at the kitchen table in the early mornings, the quiet hum of the coffee pot my only companion. It was a delicious, focused puzzle—a predatory landlord, a loophole in local ordinance, a clear path to a stay of eviction. I drafted a letter, not as Gwen Gonzalez, former legal titan, but as "a concerned community member with a background in property law," citing precedent and statute with a precision that felt like slipping on a favorite, well-worn glove.I showed the draft to Arthur over toast one morning. He read it, his eyebrows climbing."This is... viciously polite," he said, admiration in his voice. "You've essentially constructed a legal mouse trap baited with municipal code. He'll snap his own neck trying to fight it.""Just a nudge," I said, taking the l

The peace of our cove felt absolute, woven from sea-spray, Arthur's terrible puns, and the gentle, predictable rhythm of our days. The symposium was a ripple that had smoothed away, leaving our quiet contentment undisturbed. Even Arthur's fledgling authorial angst had subsided into a pleased hum as he tinkered with edits.The disruption came not with a dramatic phone call, but with a text. From Lance.It flashed on my screen as I was weeding the herb garden: Hey. You free for a coffee? Town’s gone nuts. Could use a neutral party to bitch to.It was so casual, so unlike the fraught, emotional summons of the past. A request from a friend. I showed it to Arthur, who was sketching a suspiciously compost-shaped cloud in his notebook.“Lance wants to complain ab