Hazel's POV
The apartment was silent when I let myself in, dripping rainwater onto the marble entryway Julian had imported from Italy the year we married. I stood there for a long moment, looking at the life we had built, his cufflinks in a velvet tray by the door, my crutches leaning against the wall where I left them each morning like a soldier surrendering her weapon.
I didn't cry. I thought I would, but the tears didn't come. Instead, I felt strangely clear, the way the world looks right after a storm passes, sharp edged and rinsed clean.
I walked through the rooms slowly, the way you might walk through a house you were about to sell, cataloguing everything with a strange, detached tenderness. The reading chair by the window where I used to sit and wait for the sound of his car in t
