All Chapters of AFTER DIVORCE : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Chapter Eleven: Interview The building was exactly the kind that makes you sit up straighter the moment you walk in.Glass doors, marble floors, the quiet hum of something serious happening on every floor. I checked my reflection in the lobby mirror once — hair still pinned, dress still right — and took the lift to the fourth floor.The receptionist smiled and asked me to wait.I sat in the chair nearest the window, held my bag in my lap, and took a slow breath.---The hiring manager was not what I expected.He was younger than his title suggested. Calm in a way that did not feel performed. He shook my hand, gestured to the seat across from his desk and looked at my file for exactly thirty seconds before he looked up and asked me to tell him about myself in my own words — not what was on the paper.I talked.About what I had studied, what I had done before I left work, what I understood about the industry and where I thought it was going. I talked the way you talk when you have been

Chapter Thirteen: A Day For MeI woke up smiling.Not the careful kind. Not the kind that checks itself before it fully forms. Just a real, unguarded smile at the ceiling of an empty bedroom before I had even fully remembered why.Then I remembered.I sat up and grabbed my phone and opened the email and read it again just to make sure it was still there. Still real. Still mine.It was.Edward's side of the bed was untouched. He had not come home. Normally that fact would sit in my chest like something heavy. This morning I looked at his empty pillow and felt nothing but free.I got up and started getting ready.---The office building looked different in the morning light. Warmer somehow. I walked through those glass doors with my shoulders back and took the lift to the fourth floor and when the receptionist saw me she smiled like she had been expecting me.The hiring manager stood up when I walked in and shook my hand."Congratulations," he said. "Welcome to the team.""Thank you," I

Chapter Fifteen: New BeginningsThe smell reached me before I was fully awake.Something warm and buttery and sweet drifting through the bedroom, soft enough that I thought I was dreaming it. I opened my eyes slowly and turned toward Edward's side of the bed.Empty.The sheets were cool. He had been up for a while.I sat up, and that was when I saw the tray on the nightstand, covered, and a small folded note resting on top of it."Babe?" I called.Nothing."Edward?"Silence. Just the house settling around me.I picked up the note.*Good morning sunshine.**I hope you slept as well as you deserved to. I made you breakfast before I left — eat it while it's warm, don't let it go cold the way you always do. I've been thinking about yesterday and I just want you to know that yesterday reminded me of everything I have. I'm sorry for the times I made you feel like you didn't matter. You matter. You matter more than you know. Have a beautiful day. My Lady.*I read it once. Then again. Then a t

Chapter Seventeen: Realization He almost choked on the first bite.I was still sitting beside him when it happened — he reached for the glass on the table, brought it to his lips, and pulled back immediately."That's too cold," he said, coughing slightly into his fist.I stood up without thinking. "I'll get you water."I went to the kitchen, filled a glass from the tap, and came back. He took it and drank. I watched him settle and then instead of sitting back beside him I pulled out the chair across the table and sat there.For a while it was just the sound of him eating, the television still low in the background, the house quiet around us. I watched him without making it obvious — the way his jaw moved, the way he reached for the glass again, all of it so ordinary. So familiar.*Just a husband eating dinner.*I looked down at the table.He was almost done when he set his fork down and looked across at me with the particular expression he wore when he had been carrying something and

Chapter Nineteen: The Version I Didn't MarryThe knock came an hour and thirty minutes after the call.I had not been idle. My laptop was open on the dining table. The morning's first task already pulled up, and I had been working through it steadily — or trying to, which was not quite the same thing. My eyes kept moving to the document still sitting at the far end of the table exactly where Edward had placed it the night before. I had not touched it. Had not moved it. It sat there in my line of sight like something that knew it was being watched.I got up and opened the door.Lisa came in still unwrapping her scarf, slightly out of breath, her bag sliding off one shoulder."I'm so sorry for coming late," she said, stepping inside. "The board members called an emergency Zoom meeting out of nowhere, I couldn't just leave—""It's fine," I said. I closed the door behind her. "How are you doing?"She stopped and looked at me."I'm supposed to be asking you that." She dropped her bag on the