I saw her one morning while I was leaving a café. She stood near the entrance, hands clasped tightly, eyes searching the crowd for me. The moment our eyes met, something in her expression—relief mixed with worry—held me still. She looked older, not in years but in the way a person does after carrying something heavy for too long.
She told me that leaving had not been a decision made in anger, but in desperation. She had reached a point in her life where every instinct told her she needed to step back, not only from my marriage, but from the patterns that had shaped her relationships for years.
She explained that she had grown up around conflict and had spent much of her adult life expecting it, even when it wasn’t present. Her warning about Aaron, she said, came from old experiences she hadn’t fully healed from.
