I kept the pearls.
I don't know why. They were the only thing I took from the townhouse, the only thing I could not bring myself to leave behind. I had worn them to every gala, every dinner, every event where I had stood beside Henry and smiled and pretended. They were a symbol of everything I had been, and everything I had given up.
But they were also beautiful. And they were mine.
I wore them sometimes, on ordinary days, when I was walking to work or sitting on my balcony. I wore them to remind myself that I had survived. I wore them to remind myself that I had made a choice, and that the choice had been mine.
The road forward was not clear. It never is. There were days when I missed the townhouse, the garden, the life I had built. There were days when I wondered if I had done the ri
