At my Manhattan bridal fitting, his mother scanned my $14,000 gown and sneered, “White is for girls with a real family.” The salon froze. My fiancé looked down… and said nothing.

A restaurant reservation for two I forgot to cancel because I had made it months earlier in optimism. A cufflink left in a drawer of my guest room from a night Derek once stayed over after a charity dinner, never guessing the apartment was mine. The way my body sometimes still turned toward a joke or observation at the end of a long day, searching for a person no longer entitled to receive my softer thoughts.

Loss is embarrassing that way. Even when a decision is right, the body mourns habit before the mind finishes thanking itself for escape.

One Thursday in April, after a fourteen-hour day and a transatlantic conference call that should have been an email, I found myself standing in front of Bellmont Bridal on Madison Avenue.

I had not planned to go.

But the car slowed at a light, and there it was. The same windows, the same careful displays, the same polished brass handles. Something in me refused to let that address remain the site of my humiliation.

“Keep the car here,” I told my driver.