StoriesBlog I was free, and that was worth everything. I needed money. My savings were enough for a few months of groceries and electricity, but I couldn’t live on them forever.
More importantly, I needed a purpose. I needed to remember who I was before I became Ryan’s wife. I updated my resume.
I dusted off my portfolio, the one Ryan had called amateur and quaint. I put on my best suit, drove my rental truck into the center of town, and walked into the office of Stone and Shore Design.
It was the only major design firm in the area. They specialized in coastal luxury. The building was made of glass and cedar wood, smelling of fresh coffee and blueprints.
The owner, Daniel Brooks, was a man in his 50s with salt-and-pepper hair and hands that looked like they had actually built things, not just signed checks. He didn’t look at my clothes or my ringless finger.
He looked at my sketches. He flipped through the pages in silence. The silence stretched on for five minutes.
My heart hammered in my chest. I was terrified he would say the same things Ryan used to say. I was terrified he would tell me I had no talent.
Finally, he closed the folder. He looked me in the eye.
“These are good,” he said. “They have soul. You understand light.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “Thank you.”
“We’re swamped with a new resort project down the coast,” Daniel said. “I need someone who can handle the interiors without me holding their hand. Can you start Monday?”
“I can start today,” I said.
And just like that, I had a job. Working at Stone and Shore was the opposite of my life with Ryan. In the city, everything was about appearance.
It was about who you knew and how expensive your shoes were. Here, it was about the work. Daniel treated me like a professional.
He asked for my opinion on fabric swatches. When I suggested moving a wall in a client’s beach house to open up the view, he didn’t dismiss me.
He looked at the plans, nodded, and said, “That’s brilliant, Claire. Let’s do it.”
Hearing those words—”that’s brilliant”—felt like water in a desert. I went into the bathroom afterwards and cried for two minutes, not from sadness but from relief.
I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was for a single drop of respect. My routine became my medicine. I woke up at 6 a.m. every morning.
I made coffee and drank it on the porch, watching the fog roll off the ocean. I drove to work with the windows down. I worked hard all day, losing myself in colors and textures.
I came home, cooked a simple dinner for myself—fresh fish, vegetables, rice—and ate it while reading a book. I worked on the cottage on weekends.
The cottage was transforming, just like me. I sanded down the floors and stained them a warm honey color. I painted the walls a soft white to reflect the sea light.
I planted hydrangeas along the walkway. One evening, about three months after I arrived, I was working late at the office. Everyone else had gone home.
I was trying to figure out a lighting plan for a dining room. Daniel walked in. He was carrying two cardboard cups.
“I saw your light on,” he said. “Thought you might need some fuel.” He placed a hot chocolate on my desk.
“Thank you,” I said, surprised.
“You’re doing great work, Claire,” he said, leaning against the doorframe. “The clients love you. You have a way of listening to them that makes them feel heard.”
I smiled. “I spent a long time learning how to listen,” I said. “I know what it feels like when no one listens to you.”
Daniel looked at me thoughtfully. He didn’t pry. He didn’t ask for the gossip about my marriage.
He just nodded. “Well, we’re lucky to have you,” he said. “Don’t stay too late. The ocean air is better than office air.”
He left. I sat there with the hot chocolate, feeling a warmth in my chest that had nothing to do with the drink. I wasn’t just an employee here.
I was a person. Ryan had tried to convince me that I was useless without him. He had tried to make me believe that the world was scary and I was incompetent.
He was wrong. I was paying my own bills. I was fixing my own house. I was making my own friends.
I remember one specific Saturday. I had just finished painting the front door a deep ocean blue. I stepped back to look at it.
There was paint on my cheek and dirt under my fingernails. My hair was a mess. I looked down at my hands.
They looked strong. They looked capable. I realized I hadn’t thought about Ryan in three days. The ghost was fading.
Six months after I left, the phone call came. It was Jessica, a woman who used to be my friend in the city. I say “friend” in quotes because she was really just someone who came to our parties to drink our wine.
She loved drama. She thrived on it.
“Claire!” she practically screamed into the phone. “Oh my god, have you heard?”
I was in the garden pruning the rose bushes. I put the phone on speaker and set it on the stone wall.
“Heard what, Jessica?” I asked calmly. Snip, snip.
“Ryan is getting married. To that girl, the secretary.”
I paused. The shears hovered over a dead branch. I waited for the pain.
I waited for the jealousy to twist my stomach. I waited for the anger to make my hands shake. Nothing. I felt nothing.
“When?” I asked.
“Next Saturday, can you believe it? It hasn’t even been a year since you left. They’re doing it at the Plaza in New York. A huge black-tie thing. Everyone is talking about it. They’re saying it’s going to be the wedding of the decade.”
“That sounds expensive,” I said.
Jessica paused, clearly disappointed by my lack of reaction. “Is that all you have to say? Claire, he’s replacing you. He’s trying to rub it in your face.”
“He can do whatever he wants, Jessica,” I said, cutting off the dead branch. “He’s not my husband anymore. He’s not my problem.”
“Well, I just thought you should know,” she said, her voice dropping. “People are saying he looks manic, like he’s trying too hard, but Madison looks like she won the lottery.”
“I have to go, Jessica,” I said. “I have work to do.” I hung up.
I stood there in the quiet garden. The ocean breeze cooled the sweat on my neck. Ryan was getting married.
He was standing in a tuxedo, promising to love and cherish a woman he had been sleeping with behind my back. He was probably spending a fortune on flowers and champagne, trying to prove to the world that he was happy. Trying to prove he had won.
But standing there in the dirt, surrounded by the smell of blooming roses and salt water, I knew the truth. He hadn’t won anything. He was just repeating the cycle.
He needed someone to adore him. He needed an audience. Madison was his new audience. I pitied her.
The day of the wedding arrived. I knew exactly what was happening in New York. It was 5 p.m. there.
The ceremony was starting. The music was playing. Ryan was probably checking his reflection in a mirror, fixing his tie, making sure he looked perfect.
In Harbor Pine, it was 2 p.m. I didn’t sit at home and cry. I didn’t drink a bottle of wine.
I went for a hike. There was a trail that led up the cliffs north of town. It was steep and rocky.
I climbed steadily, my breathing rhythmic, my legs burning with effort. When I reached the top, the view took my breath away. The Pacific Ocean stretched out forever, a vast sheet of blue diamonds under the sun.
I sat on a rock and drank water from my canteen. I closed my eyes. I imagined the wedding.
I imagined the stuffy ballroom, the fake smiles, the hushed gossip, the pressure to be perfect. Then I opened my eyes and looked at the horizon. I had no one to impress up here.
I had no one to serve. I took a deep breath. The air tasted of freedom.
“I release you,” I said out loud. My voice was snatched away by the wind. “I release you, Ryan. You can’t hurt me anymore.”
I stayed up there until the sun began to set, painting the sky in shades of purple and gold. It was more beautiful than any wedding decoration money could buy. I walked back down the trail in the twilight.
When I got home, I made a cup of herbal tea and sat by the fire. I fell asleep on the sofa with a book on my chest. I didn’t dream about him.
Indifference is a strange thing. It’s not angry. It’s not loud. It’s just… quiet.
It’s the absence of burden. It was the feeling of putting down a heavy backpack I had been carrying for 10 years. I didn’t care if they were happy.
I didn’t care if they were miserable. I just didn’t care.
I wasn’t at the wedding, of course. But in the age of social media, you don’t have to be present to see the disaster. And I heard the full story later from the man who caused it, Frank Miller.
Frank was an old friend of my grandmother. He was in his seventies, a retired lawyer with a sharp wit and zero tolerance for nonsense. He had handled my grandmother’s estate.
He was also, coincidentally, a former business associate of Ryan’s father, which was why he got an invite to the wedding. Frank came to see me a week after the event.
He sat on my porch, drinking lemonade, looking very pleased with himself.
“You should have been there, Claire,” Frank said, a twinkle in his eye. “It was quite the show.”
“Tell me,” I said.
“Well,” Frank started. “It was lavish, too lavish. Shrimp towers, ice sculptures, the works. Ryan was strutting around like a peacock. Madison was showing off a ring that looked heavy enough to break her finger.”
Frank took a sip of lemonade. “I was sitting at table four,” he continued. “Right near the head table. Ryan was giving a speech. He was talking about how he had finally found his equal.”
“He was making little digs at the past, talking about how he wasted time before finding true success.”
I rolled my eyes. Classic Ryan.
“Exactly,” Frank said. “It rubbed me the wrong way. I knew how he treated you. I knew he forced you out of your home with nothing. So, later in the night, the champagne was flowing. I walked up to congratulate him.”
“Madison was hanging on his arm. A bunch of his investors were standing around.”
Frank leaned forward. “I said, loudly enough for the whole group to hear, ‘Congratulations, Ryan. It’s good to see you bouncing back. Especially after losing such a fortune.'”
Frank chuckled. “Ryan looked confused. He said, ‘What do you mean? I didn’t lose anything. I kept the penthouse. I kept the accounts.'”
“And then?” I asked, leaning in.
“And then,” Frank said, “I dropped the hammer. I said, ‘Oh, I don’t mean the penthouse, son. I mean the coastal estate. The one Claire inherited.'”
“Ryan had laughed. ‘You mean that dump in Oregon? That shack? It’s worthless.'”
Frank shook his head. “That’s when I told him. I said, ‘Ryan, didn’t you read the zoning reports? That shack sits on five acres of prime coastal cliffside. The town just rezoned it for luxury development.'”
“‘Plus, there were the stocks your grandmother-in-law left. Since you were so eager to get Claire to sign the divorce papers quickly, you didn’t check the updated trust valuation. Claire is worth about ten times what you are right now.'”
I gasped. “You told him that?”
“I did.” Frank grinned. “And the best part is, it’s true. I finished the valuation last week. The land value skyrocketed while you were renovating.”
“What did he do?” I asked.
“He turned pale,” Frank said. “Like a sheet. He looked at Madison. Madison looked at him.”
“You could see the gears turning in her head. She thought she married the rich guy. Suddenly, she realized the ex-wife she laughed at was the one with the real power.”
Frank laughed. “The investors heard it too. One of them asked Ryan, ‘Is that true? You let a portfolio like that walk out the door?'”
“Ryan started stuttering. He looked weak. He looked incompetent.”
I sat back in my chair, stunned. I knew the house had value, but I didn’t know about the rezoning. I didn’t care about the money, not really.