Moving out of the apartment she had shared with David for seven years took surprisingly little time.
It turned out that when you stripped away the emotional labor, the unpaid housekeeping, and the invisible weight of managing a man-child’s life, Louise’s actual physical footprint was quite small.
She packed her clothes, her books, and the few pieces of art she had bought with her own money. She left the furniture. She left the appliances. She left the memories.
She was zipping up her last suitcase when the front door opened.
"Need a hand with that?"
Louise didn't look up. She knew that voice. It was the voice of a woman who had spent a lifetime coating arsenic in sugar.
Natalie stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame in a pose that was meant to look casual but was carefully c
