She got coffee from a place that didn’t exist fifteen years ago and sat on a bench watching kids chase pigeons across the plaza. Her phone buzzed with a text from her former boss. “You’re still planning to come back, right? HR’s asking for dates.”
She didn’t answer. Didn’t know what to say. She was thirty-three. She hadn’t planned for this. Hadn’t planned for anything, really, except doing the right thing. And now “the right thing” had left her alone in a decaying house, buried under decades of other people’s choices, too tired to be angry and too angry to grieve.