My mother said I should stay in the kitchen during the wedding photos—only until the “important guests” were gone. I didn’t mention that for the past year I had been

Ethan looked at her for a long moment. Then he exhaled. “Okay,” he said, and it didn’t fix everything, but it was a start. “Okay. I’ll try.”

Walking out afterward, Clare squeezed my hand and whispered, “Thank you.”

I squeezed back. “Don’t thank me,” I said. “Just keep choosing the real thing.”

As we stepped into the cold air, my phone buzzed with a text from Daniel.

Proud of you. Dinner tonight?

I stared at the message, at the simplicity of it. Proud of you. Not proud of your proximity. Not proud of how you looked in photos. Proud of you.

For the first time, I felt like the chaos had a shape. Like the wedding hadn’t been the ending, but the opening of a door my family had kept locked.

We’d spent years pretending image was everything.

Now we were learning what it cost.

Part 6

The memo storm faded the way most public storms do—loud, hungry, then suddenly bored. Another scandal replaced it. Another outrage. Another cycle.

But my life didn’t return to what it had been, because I didn’t return to what I’d been.

In November, my think tank offered me a promotion. My supervisor called me into his office and slid the letter across the desk.