“You gave me two choices.”
“Don’t be dramatic.”
“I’m not.”
I picked up my purse.
“You told me to apologize for something I didn’t do or leave.”
I glanced toward Tessa.
Then back at him.
“So I’m leaving.”
Marcus lowered his voice.
“We can discuss this at home.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean there’s nothing left to discuss about what happened here.”
I walked toward the gate.
Behind me, Marcus called my name once.
Not loudly.
Not urgently.
The way someone calls after a person who has forgotten an umbrella.
I never turned around.
And he never followed me.
PART 2
I made it three blocks before my hands started shaking.
At the first red light, I gripped the steering wheel and stared ahead.
My phone sat inside my purse.
Silent.
Part of me still expected Marcus to call.
Not because I wanted an apology.
At least that was what I told myself.
I wanted proof that three years of marriage meant enough for him to realize what he had just done.
The light turned green.
No call.
Five minutes later, still nothing.
I drove past the grocery store where Marcus and I shopped every Sunday.
Past the Mexican restaurant where he had proposed.
Past the small park where Tessa had once let me take a photo of the two of us together after her middle-school graduation.
I remembered how happy that picture had made me.
Ridiculous now.
I had spent years collecting tiny moments and treating them as evidence that things were improving.
One dinner without tension.
One thank-you text.
One Christmas gift Tessa had actually opened in front of me.
I had turned crumbs into a feast because admitting the truth would have required admitting something worse.
My problem had never really been Tessa.
She was a teenager navigating divorced parents, loyalty conflicts, and her own anger.
She had behaved badly, yes.
