I remember the wooden spoon slipping from my hand. Sauce splattered across the tile.

“Why?” I asked.

“I met someone. Someone who understands me. Someone who gets my ambition.”

Someone younger. Someone prettier. Someone who wasn’t exhausted from raising toddlers.

Her name was Tessa—my friend, a woman who had stood beside us at our wedding.

The divorce that followed was brutal. Garrett’s lawyer was polished and ruthless. Mine was cheap and inexperienced because that was all I could afford. Garrett kept the house, the savings, the retirement accounts—everything carefully arranged so that on paper, I had almost nothing and he had very little more. I’d been a stay-at-home mother, and his side argued that I had no career, no leverage, no real claim.

The judge barely looked at me.

I got crumbs.

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