The courthouse smelled faintly of bleach and quiet despair. The kind of place where dreams ended in ink and paperwork.
I stood there in my thrift-store dress, one my mother had once loved, holding a purse that had seen better years. Across the table, my ex-husband, Mark, leaned forward to sign the final divorce documents. His pen scraped against the paper with an air of victory, his smirk sharp enough to wound.
