“You said divorce,” she said.
“I did.”
“Then move.”
For the first time, his confidence cracked.
He stepped aside.
Claire rolled the suitcase past him, through the kitchen, past the dinner nobody deserved, and out the side door.
By 5:16, she was backing out of the driveway with her son asleep in the car seat behind her.
She did not drive to a hotel.
She drove to Mrs. Parker.
PART 2
Before marriage, before motherhood, before the Calloways slowly taught her to make herself smaller, Mrs. Parker had been Claire’s mentor. She had hired Claire years earlier as a young auditor and once told her, “You don’t miss much.”
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