You didn’t expect to see your ex-wife again under chandelier light.
Not after seven years.
Not after the divorce papers. Not after the cold, efficient way you cut her out of your life when your title got longer, your suits got sharper, and your ambition began eating everything softer than itself. You had once told yourself that leaving Mariana was not cruelty. It was strategy. You were moving up, and she was too quiet, too modest, too ordinary to fit the glossy future you had started rehearsing in your head.
That was the story you repeated until it sounded like truth.
