Then I walked out into the winter air of Manhattan, where the sidewalks were bright with slush and honking cabs and people too occupied with their own lives to know the precise moment another woman’s future had changed.
I did not cry in the car.
I did not cry in the elevator.
I did not cry when I let myself into the apartment Derek believed was the nicest place I’d ever lived, not knowing I paid more each month for its private security than he did for rent on his Tribeca loft.
I simply took off my heels, set them side by side near the console table, and stood in the silence.
The apartment occupied the top three floors of a prewar building overlooking Central Park. It had floor-to-ceiling windows, white oak floors, a custom kitchen in matte black stone, and a library with rolling ladders and hidden lighting built into the shelves. There were paintings on the walls worth enough to finance most people’s retirements. The dining table seated fourteen. The primary bedroom had two fireplaces and a dressing room the size of my first apartment after college. No one outside a very small circle knew it belonged to me.
Derek had never been here.
That had not been an accident.