Chapter 3

I was still in the doorway when Elliot turned back to face the neighbors.

"Look." His voice had shifted—measured now, tired, a man explaining something he'd explained before. "I'm sorry you're all having to see this. The marriage has been over for a long time. Anyone who actually knows us knows that." He gestured toward Celia. "Yes, this is Celia. I'm not pretending otherwise. What I'm telling you is that this—" he gestured at me, at all of it— "is exactly what I've been dealing with. She can't accept it. That's always been the issue."

He looked around at the neighbors with something close to apology. "Showing up like this, the accusations, the scene—this is what she does."

Someone on the path had gone quiet. A few people exchanged looks.

I thought about the voice he used when he said your photography isn't really a career, babe—patient, like he was helping me see something I'd missed. The same voice when he'd called this place your little project every time I mentioned the leaking roof. The same voice for your mom is just a lot, don't let her get in your head every time Diana called.

Five years. The same voice, every time, and I'd always let it land.

Nobody said anything. Nobody stepped forward. A couple of people found somewhere else to look—not agreeing with Elliot exactly, but not prepared to get involved in someone else's marriage either.

I reached into my bag.

Every time I came to the cottage I brought the property documents—for renewals, insurance, whatever Simone's office needed that season. Force of habit. The copy I pulled out now had her office stamp from last spring. My name. The date. Calloway across the top.

"This is the deed," I said, loud enough for everyone. "My name. My grandmother's before mine. This property has been in my family for thirty years." I held it up. "If someone needs to leave, it's not me."

Elliot stepped forward and took it out of my hand.

No argument. No hesitation. He just reached over, folded it once, and put it in his jacket pocket.

"My lawyer will handle whatever you think this proves," he said.

The neighbors stayed quiet. One woman near the garden had already looked away—the particular way people look away when something uncomfortable is happening and they've decided it's not their problem. A few others seemed to be waiting to see what happened next, not hostile, just unwilling to step into a stranger's marriage.

Nobody asked him to give it back.

He was very good at this. I just hadn't seen him do it in front of an audience before.

Celia stepped forward. She touched his arm once, lightly, then looked at me with so much careful sympathy that I almost believed it.

"Look," she said, quiet enough to sound private. "I know this is a lot. But maybe the right move now is to get proper legal advice. For your own sake." A small pause. "I can give you a name, if that would help."

For your own sake.

She said it like she meant every word. Like she wasn't standing in my house, in my grandmother's cardigan, beside my husband, showing me where the door was.

I understood exactly what she was saying.

This is already done. You're just the last one to catch up.