I picked up my pancakes. Marcus moved to Seattle, apparently. Took a job with a tech startup starting over. Rachel's still here living with her parents, working temp jobs while she figures out what's next. Have you seen her?
Once at the grocery store, we made eye contact across the produce section, and I watched her decide whether to approach me. She didn't just turned around and walk the other way. How did that feel? Like seeing a ghost, like encountering someone who used to matter, who used to be central to my life, and realizing they're just another person now, a stranger who happens to know where I'm ticklish and how I take my coffee. We sat in silence for a while.
David eating his omelette. Me not eating my pancakes. Both of us watching snow fall outside the window. What comes next? David asked finally.
Now that it's officially over, now that you're officially single? What's the plan? I don't know. I've spent 3 months focused on ending things. I haven't thought much about beginning again.
Maybe it's time to start thinking about it. Maybe. But the truth was I didn't know how to begin again. Didn't know how to date after 12 years of marriage. Didn't know how to trust someone new when the person I trusted most had betrayed me so completely.
Didn't know how to open myself to vulnerability again when vulnerability had cost me so much. There's something I haven't told you, I said suddenly. About the offshore account, about the hidden money. David set down his fork. I thought Rachel returned all of it as part of the settlement.
She did all 127,000 plus penalties. But there was more. More? The forensic investigator found additional accounts. Smaller ones harder to trace.
Another 43,000 scattered across various institutions. Money Rachel had been hiding for even longer. Did you confront her about it? No. I documented it, showed it to Sandra, and we decided to let it go.
David stared at me. You let her keep 43,000 that she stole from you. I let her keep her escape fund because I realized I stopped trying to articulate something I'd been feeling. I realized that taking everything would make me feel powerful, but it wouldn't make me feel better. And at some point, revenge stops being justice and becomes just cruelty.