Evelyn Harlow walked beside me.
Mrs. Martha had insisted on coming too. She stood behind us, clutching a small handbag full of my mother’s pearls and personal papers as though guarding treasure.
Every head turned.
I did not look at them.
I looked at Julian.
His expression shifted through surprise, anger, embarrassment, and something almost like fear.
“Clarissa,” he said.
For three years, I had waited for my name to sound gentle in his mouth.
Now it sounded like a warning.
I walked forward.
The crowd parted for me.
Chloe stared as if seeing a ghost rise from beneath the floorboards. Perhaps in a way, she was. The wife she had mocked was not the woman standing before her now.
Julian reached for control.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said quietly.
I almost laughed.
How fitting.
Even now, surrounded by the collapse of his lies, he still thought he could tell me where I belonged.
