I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My throat was raw from crying the night before, and if I had opened my mouth, I was afraid I would scream. So I kept walking, my heels clicking against the stone driveway, my hand shaking so badly I nearly dropped my suitcase twice.
“Sources say your husband’s legal team destroyed you in court. Is that true?”
“Sophia, did you sign a prenup?”
“Is it true you’re homeless?”
That last one made me stop. Not homeless. Not yet. I had a motel room booked in Newark for the next week. After that, I had no idea. My parents would not take my calls. My sister Diane told me I had made my bed and hung up before I could ask her for help. My friends—Richard’s friends, really—had all vanished the moment the divorce papers were filed. I turned back one last time. Richard was still watching. He raised his coffee mug in a mock toast. Vanessa laughed, her hand on his chest, and I felt something inside me crack so deeply I was not sure I would ever be whole again.
I got into the Uber. The driver did not say anything. He probably recognized me from the headlines. Socialite Left With Nothing. The Fall of Sophia Hartfield. That had been yesterday’s New York Post. Today’s would probably be worse. The motel in Newark smelled like disinfectant and desperation. The bedspread had a cigarette burn in one corner. The wallpaper was peeling. I sat on the edge of the bed, staring at my reflection in the mirror above the dresser. I looked hollow. I looked like a woman who had forgotten how to be a person. I was thirty-eight years old and I had nothing—no money, no home, no career. I had given up my marketing job when Richard insisted his wife should not work. No dignity either. Just two suitcases and a shattered sense of self. I spent the first two days in that room crying. I did not eat. I barely slept. I kept replaying the divorce proceedings in my head, the way Richard’s lawyer painted me as a gold digger, a manipulator, someone who had contributed nothing to the marriage. The judge had believed every word. I walked away with nothing, not even alimony. Richard’s team had been too thorough. On the third day, I forced myself to shower, to eat a granola bar from the vending machine downstairs, to think about what came next. I had no answers, but I knew I could not stay in that room forever. That was when she appeared.
