Chapter 8: Distance
Separation began as logistics before it became a word we used aloud.
I took a short-term lease in a building where no one expected me to arrange flowers for a foundation dinner. Harold kept the larger house and the habits that filled it. Friends from the gala circuit sorted themselves with the efficiency of people protecting invitations; a few wrote privately to say the auction had not been funny from the second row. I thanked them without reopening the night for group analysis.
May you like
Owen remained a careful distance away. When a procedural question required his signature, it arrived through counsel. When a journalist connected the bid to the Prescott Foundation and called my new number, I declined to narrate. The story belonged to me more than it belonged to the society pages. I spent evenings learning the weight of unscheduled hours—time that was not prep for Harold’s entrance or recovery from his remarks. Dustin—no, that was another life; here there were no children in the frame, only the long quiet of a marriage that had used silence as glue.
One afternoon I walked past the hotel where the gala had been held. The ballroom doors were closed. I did not go inside. Some rooms did not require a return visit to stay finished.
