At six in the morning, I finally slept.
Not in my childhood bedroom. I couldn’t bear the thought of walking past old photographs of ballet recitals, school awards, and summer vacations with my mother’s arm around me.
I slept in the guest room closest to the sitting room, curled beneath a quilt while my wedding dress hung over the back of a chair like a ghost.
When I woke, the sunlight was too bright.
For one blissful second, I forgot.
Then my hand moved toward the space beside me, looking for a warmth that wasn’t there, and the whole night returned.
Cynthia’s heels.
Brenda’s voice.
Elias laughing.
Plain rice.
I sat up slowly.
On the bedside table was a tray with coffee, toast, berries, and one folded note in my father’s handwriting.
Eat something. Rebecca is in the library. I am here.
Four words mattered most.
I am here.
I showered, scrubbed away the last of my wedding makeup, and changed into clothes my father’s housekeeper had placed outside the door: soft gray trousers, a white sweater, and the pearl earrings my mother had given me when I graduated college.
In the mirror, I looked less like a woman destroyed and more like a woman recovering from a fever.
That would have to be enough.
Rebecca was in the library surrounded by documents. My laptop was open beside her, along with copies of bank statements, closing papers, emails, and messages I had forwarded her during the night.
She looked up when I entered.
“Good. We have a few things to discuss.”
My father was seated near the fireplace, reading printed pages with the cold concentration he usually reserved for hostile acquisition proposals.
“What did you find?” I asked.
Rebecca tapped the top sheet. “The apartment is clean. Titled solely in your legal name, Eleanor Grace Wilson. Elias has no claim through ownership. The funds came from your trust distribution and a personal savings account. His account was used only as a temporary pass-through for one payment because you were traveling when the deposit deadline arrived.”
“I remember,” I said. “He said it would be easier.”
“And you reimbursed him within twenty-four hours from an account clearly linked to your trust,” Rebecca said. “Documented.”
My shoulders loosened for the first time.
“However,” she continued, “the marriage complicates emotional leverage, not necessarily legal title. Cynthia’s plan seems to rely more on pressure, reputation, and making you abandon the apartment voluntarily than on a strong legal claim.”
