When You Realize You’re No Longer a Person
That night the house buzzed with party prep.
Caterers moved through the kitchen.
Florists arranged dramatic white lilies in the living room.
I wasn’t allowed to sit in there anymore.
I might “clutter the aesthetic.”
Dinner was a ham sandwich on a paper plate.
Alone in my room, while the smell of truffle oil and roasting beef drifted under the door.
I stared at the photos on my nightstand.
- Mason at seven, gap-toothed and smiling
- Mason at graduation
- Mason at his wedding, where Jacqueline called my dress “quaint” in the way that meant “embarrassing”
This is what my life had become.
Quiet. Apologetic. Waiting to be stored away.
Then I remembered the one thing they didn’t know about.
The country house.
A small cottage my parents left me, two hours north in Millbrook.
Mason didn’t know because I never put his name on the deed.
Some instinct told me to keep one thing sacred.
I decided then: I wasn’t going to any nursing home.
I was leaving tonight.
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