Chapter 23
the best chapters of my life
Cecily
The sound of the zipper breaks the silence in my room.
I look at my reflection in the mirror. Dark pants. A cream turtleneck sweater. And over it, my heavy gray wool coat. The gloves are in my pocket. The scarf is folded neatly over the chair. It all seems so ordinary, but today, getting dressed feels like a ritual.
Today is my first day in therapy. To call it nerves would be an understatement.
After months of telling myself I’d go someday, I finally did it.
I booked a session with Felicity’s therapist, Dr. Caroline.
She’s been helping Felicity for years. I’ve heard her name so many times it almost feels like meeting someone I already know.
Maybe that will make it easier. Or maybe nothing will.
I grab my bag and the scarf, then check the time again on my phone. Still early. But I can’t stay here any longer. The house is silent as I walk down the stairs. I wrap the scarf around my neck, fasten the buttons of my coat all the way up, and step into the cold.
In the car, I think about what I’ll say to her. Whether I should spill everything at once—the doubts, the suspicion, the betrayal. The discoveries that came after. My father’s past. The divorce.
The divorce.
It’s only been two weeks, and yet it feels like a lifetime. That day replays in my mind in flashes. The conference room, the sound of pens scratching signatures that would end more than eighteen years of a shared life.
Colin didn’t speak. Neither did I.
We both pretended to listen, nodding at the lawyers as if any of it mattered. I already knew every clause, every word. We’d been through enough drafts to turn heartbreak into legal language. He didn’t contest a single thing.
Everything was divided equally. He let me choose first, and I gave him the house. I didn’t want it. Not anymore. That place stopped being a home long before the papers were signed.
The only real point of tension was his insistence on paying spousal support. But I refused.
Not out of pride. Not out of bitterness. Just because I didn’t need it, and I didn’t want it. We’d built enough together—assets, accounts, investments—to make sure we’d both thrive apart. I have my work, my column, the blog that brings in more than enough on its own.
When they slid the papers across the table, I signed them without hesitation. It wasn’t easy, but I’d been mourning us for so long that signing those papers felt almost like mercy.
That room didn’t end our marriage; that happened the day he chose another woman. It only gave me a place to lay its bones to rest.
When Colin finally left, the door closed with a sound I’ll never forget. It echoed through me like a final heartbeat. I sat there for a long time after, motionless. Breathing. Not crying. Just waiting for the world to start again.
That night, I did cry.
Not with rage, but with an exhausted kind of sorrow that comes after acceptance. I cried for the woman I used to be, for the love I thought would survive anything. For the home we built and lost. For every version of us that would never exist again.
But between the sobs, I made myself a promise.
That it would be the last time. The last night I would cry for Colin. The last night I would let what he did decide how I felt. The last night I would give our marriage, or its ruin, any power over me.
Never again.
As soon as I step into the room, she greets me with a light handshake and asks me to call her simply Caroline.
We exchange polite words, the kind meant to fill the silence without saying anything real. I nod, murmur a few answers, and sit on the sofa across from her while she finishes settling in.
My eyes wander around the room. It’s minimal, but intentional. Soft light filters through gauzy curtains. An abstract blue painting hangs above a low bookshelf. A folded blanket rests on the armchair beside me. Nothing about this space screams therapy.
When Caroline looks back at me, she asks me to tell her a bit more about what brought me here.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” I blurt out. “I mean... I do know. But it doesn’t really make sense.”
She studies me for a moment before asking, her tone even, “Why do you think it doesn’t make sense?”
I breathe in, trying to gather my thoughts. “I know why I feel the way I do,” I say slowly. “And I know what I’m supposed to do to move forward… rationally, at least. I’ve told myself all the right things, read all the right books. I can quote them, even.”
I pause. She doesn’t say anything, waiting for the real answer hidden behind the rehearsed one.
“The logical thing would be to just... do it. Keep my chin up. Move on. Not sit here searching for—” I pause, the word catching in my throat. “—for validation.”
Caroline lowers her hands, closes her notebook, and sets it aside.
“I don’t think you came here for validation,” she says gently. “I might be wrong—we’ve known each other for less than ten minutes—but my experience tells me you came for something else. Tools. Ways to cope.”
She tilts her head slightly, watching me. “Knowing what to do and being able to do it are rarely the same thing. Does that make sense?”
I nod, my fingers twisting one of the buttons on my coat.
“From what you shared during our talk on the phone, or as I like to call it, the pre-session,” she continues, “my understanding is that you’ve been through a series of traumatic events. And there’s nothing simple, easy, or logical about trauma.”
“I know,” I whisper.
She leans forward slightly. “I like to think I can help you find your way back, to a place where you can breathe again, where things hurt less sharply. To help you find the answers inside yourself that maybe, right now, you’re too afraid to face.”
Her words linger, until she asks, “Would you like that?”
“Yes,” I say, my voice unsteady. “Please.”
And so, I spend the next forty minutes talking.
Stopping. Starting again. About how I feel, and how I’m so tired of feeling this way. Caroline doesn’t press for details; she doesn’t need them yet. She listens. She waits. And I realize she’s giving me the space to choose when to let the rest out.
When the session ends, I stop at the front desk and schedule weekly appointments for the next three months.
I park by the entrance of Pier 1, leave my bag in the car, and take only my phone and keys.
In my teenage years, Brooklyn Bridge Park was where I always went when I needed space to think, or to pour a few lines into my diary until the world felt lighter.
I don’t know what made me come here after the session, but as the cold breeze brushes my face, I realize it was the right choice. The park is almost empty at this hour, a quiet Wednesday noon wrapped in winter light.
I sit on a bench facing the water, the skyline of Lower Manhattan stretching before me. For a long while, I just watch it. The water moving in slow, silver ripples, the sunlight breaking against it as if it’s trying to heal something, too.
I take my phone from my pocket. I want to talk to someone. I check the time, Mark is still in the meeting he mentioned this morning. And Felicity... I can’t bring myself to tell her everything. I don’t want to hand her my pain and watch her carry it, pretending it doesn’t hurt her, too.
I unlock the phone.
“I meant what I said—you can call me anytime, for any reason.”
No. I shouldn’t.
He probably said it out of kindness. A polite gesture, nothing more. I stare at the screen, my thumb hovering over his name. And before I can talk myself out of it, I tap.
Me: Hey. Are you free to talk?
Less than ten minutes pass before the phone vibrates with his call.
“Cecily.”
My name in his voice feels different. Low, rough at the edges, grounded in a way that makes something inside me unclench. There’s warmth there.
“Hi, Alexander,” I say, my tone easing. “I hope I’m not interrupting... another one of your meetings.”
He lets out a short chuckle.
“No. No meetings. How are you, Cecily?”
I look down, noticing the way my right foot won’t stay still. “Today was my first therapy session,” I say, my voice small.
He hums a low, thoughtful sound that somehow reaches me through the line. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asks gently.
“Maybe later,” I say after a moment. “Tell me about your day instead—or your work. Anything you want to share.”
There’s a pause, followed by a hint of laughter in his tone. “Well... my nonna—my grandmother—she’s eighty and stubborn as ever, decided last weekend she had to climb the apple tree behind the house because, apparently, store-bought apples are ‘soulless.’”
I actually laugh. It bursts out of me before I can stop it. And just like that, the pressure in my chest starts to give.
He keeps talking, sharing small, ordinary stories—about his grandmother, about a recipe that went wrong. I listen. I ask questions. I laugh again.
And the longer I hear his voice, the easier it becomes to breathe. It’s not something I can explain... only that it feels like warmth spreading from the inside out, melting something frozen in me.
I tilt my head back, looking up at the sky. Pale blue and cold, the sun shining without much heat. But it’s enough.
Because today isn’t just another day I survived. It feels like the beginning of something new.
And maybe… just maybe, the best chapters of my life are still waiting to be written.