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.
“Couldn’t even dress up for your big goodbye, Emma?” she asked sweetly, her words dripping with poison.
