Chapter 1 - Better Without Me

I was standing beneath a cardboard arch of fake snowflakes in the Christmas section of a department store outside Boston when I called my husband.

Six matching shirts were draped over my arm—red cotton, little green Christmas trees, ridiculous enough to make our nieces laugh.

I had one for Grant.

One for me.

Two for his brother Nathan and Nathan’s wife, Claire.

The smaller ones were for Lily and Emma.

I only needed Linda’s size.

“Grant, what size shirt does your mom wear? I found matching Christmas shirts for everyone.”

Silence.

Not distracted silence.

Not the silence of somebody checking a tag or turning down the television.

The guilty kind.

“Grant?”

Something clinked in the background.

Glasses.

Then laughter.

A child squealed.

My grip tightened around the shirts.

Before Grant answered, Linda’s voice floated through the phone.

“Don’t bother, Emily. We did Christmas yesterday.”

I stared at the plastic snow beneath my boots.

“Yesterday?”

Linda laughed softly.

“Everyone was available, so we moved it up.”

Everyone.

Except me.

For the previous week, I had worked until nearly nine every night finishing a year-end acquisition at the consulting firm where I was a senior financial analyst. I had apologized to Grant repeatedly.

He had kissed my forehead Tuesday morning and told me not to worry.

“Christmas dinner is Saturday. Just survive your week.”

So I had survived it.

I had spent Wednesday night wrapping gifts alone at our kitchen island.

A cashmere scarf for Linda.

A leather portfolio for Nathan.

A cookbook Claire had mentioned.

Science kits for the girls.

A vintage bottle of Scotch for Grant’s father’s old friend, who usually joined them.

And for Grant, a watch he had admired for six months.

Nearly three thousand dollars in gifts.

I had imagined everyone opening them beside our fireplace.

Apparently they had opened Christmas somewhere else.

Without me.

“Grant,” I said carefully. “You celebrated Christmas yesterday?”

He exhaled.

Like I was exhausting him.

“It wasn’t a big deal.”

“A family Christmas happened without your wife, and that isn’t a big deal?”

Linda muttered something.

Grant answered her.

Not me.

Then he finally came back to the phone.

“You were working, Emily.”

“You told me Christmas was Saturday.”

Another pause.

“Plans changed.”

“And nobody told me?”

His voice hardened.

“You turn everything into an interrogation.”

I almost laughed.

I could feel people walking around me, shopping carts passing, Christmas music playing overhead.

Then Grant said the sentence that ended my marriage.

“It was better without you.”

The words landed so cleanly that I did not cry.

I didn’t yell.

I didn’t ask him to take it back.

I looked down at the shirts.

Six matching shirts for a family that had already decided I did not match.

“Good to know,” I said.

Then I hung up.

I stood there for maybe thirty seconds.

Then I walked directly to customer service.

“I’d like to return these.”

The cashier glanced at the shirts.

“All of them?”

“Yes.”

I returned the gifts next.

Every one.

Including Grant’s watch.

When the refund hit my credit card, I walked to my car and sat behind the wheel.

Grant called.

I ignored it.

Linda called.

Ignored.

Grant again.

Then a text appeared.

You’re being dramatic. Come home and we’ll talk.

I started the engine.

But I did not drive home.

Forty minutes later, I was sitting across from Rachel Morgan.

Rachel had handled my father’s estate five years earlier.

My father, Daniel Parker, had been a quiet, cautious man who believed money did not create character; it revealed it.

When he died, he left me investments, cash, and the proceeds of a commercial property he had owned outside Worcester.

He had also left instructions.

Protect what I built for you.

Rachel had helped me do exactly that.

She listened while I told her about Christmas.

She didn’t interrupt.

When I finished, she folded her hands.

“So what do you want?”

“I don’t know.”

It was the first honest thing I had said all afternoon.

“I just know I don’t want to go home tonight and pretend this is normal.”

Rachel nodded.

“That’s different from deciding to divorce him.”

“I know.”

She opened my old estate file.

Then her expression changed.

“Emily, before you make any decisions, you need to remember how the house was purchased.”

I frowned.

“With Dad’s money.”

“Mostly.”

Our house in Wellesley had cost $1.18 million.

Almost nine hundred thousand had come from my inheritance.

The rest had come from savings and a small mortgage I paid off two years later.

Rachel turned the screen toward me.

“The deed is solely in your name.”

I knew that.

Somehow I had stopped thinking about what it meant.

Grant called it our house.

Linda called it her son’s house.

Legally, the title was mine.

Rachel continued.

“The investment account covering several household expenses is also traceable to your premarital inheritance.”

“Grant has the card.”

“He’s an authorized user. That does not make him an owner of the account.”

She watched me carefully.

“Do you want his access removed?”

I thought about Linda laughing.

Then something else surfaced.

A conversation from three weeks earlier.

Grant standing in our kitchen.

Mom’s condo is too much for her now. She’ll move into the guest suite after New Year’s.

He had not asked.

He had informed me.

I had said we needed to discuss it.

He had replied, “There’s nothing to discuss. She’s family.”

I looked at Rachel.

“Yes.”

“Just the card?”

“Everything that is legally mine.”

My phone vibrated.

Grant.

Linda.

Grant again.

I turned it facedown.

Rachel began typing.

Twenty minutes later, another message arrived.

We need to talk before you do something stupid.

I handed the phone to Rachel.

She read it.

“What would you like me to tell him?”

I stood and pulled on my coat.

“Tell him Christmas was better without me.”

Rachel almost smiled.

I reached the door, then stopped.

“And tell him he should probably start thinking about where he’s spending New Year’s.”

Rachel’s expression turned serious.

“Emily?”

“Yes?”

“Before you leave, there’s something else.”

She rotated her monitor.

An unfamiliar bank name appeared beside my address.

A home-equity inquiry had been opened eleven days earlier.

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Against my house.

And the applicant listed beneath my name was Grant.