PART 1: THE SEAT HE STOLE
My husband canceled my flight home three hours after I buried my mother, handed my boarding pass to his mistress, and smiled as he told me to watch the plane leave without me.
He believed he had taken away the last thing I had left.
What Grant Holloway did not know was that the airline he was so proudly using belonged to me.
I stood beneath the white lights of Gate C18 at Eastbridge International Airport, still wearing the black dress from my mother’s funeral.
The fabric smelled faintly of rain, lilies, and the cold earth that had fallen onto her casket.
My chest felt hollow.
Not broken.
Hollow.
As if someone had reached inside me and removed every warm thing I had ever carried.
Across from me stood Grant.
My husband of seven years.
His charcoal suit was perfectly pressed. His silver watch gleamed beneath the terminal lights. There was no mud on his shoes because he had not stood beside me at the cemetery.
There were no tears in his eyes because he had not loved my mother.
Beside him, Madison Vale held his arm with both hands.
She wore a cream-colored coat, glossy heels, and the small victorious smile of a woman who had spent months imagining this moment. She leaned against him as if she had already moved into my home, slept on my side of the bed, and erased every photograph that proved I had ever existed.
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