I rubbed my temple.
“It was still their wedding night.”
“Maggie, she put you beside trash cans.”
“I know.”
“And Daniel should have noticed before you did.”
That was the part I could not escape.
Vanessa had been deliberately cruel.
But Daniel had been absent.
He had allowed distance between us to become normal. He had made me a guest at the edge of his life.
Perhaps he did not know about the chair, but he had created a world where Vanessa believed she could put me there.
When I arrived home after midnight, the house was quiet.
I carefully hung my dress in the closet because old habits survive even when a heart is breaking.
Then I locked the envelope inside my desk drawer.
I barely slept.
By morning, my phone showed thirty-one missed calls.
At 8:14, someone knocked on the front door.
Through the peephole, I saw Daniel standing on the porch in yesterday’s wrinkled dress shirt.
