Chapter One
CLAIRE
The wine is almost gone. The bottle's half-full of backwash and bad decisions, and I'm still pouring. Adele is on repeat, because apparently I want to feel every fucking thing tonight. Someone Like You.
Of course it is. It’s only fitting that I’d be drinking alone to a song about someone moving on.
I'm still wearing my wedding ring.
Pathetic. I know.
I keep touching it, spinning it, waiting for it to feel like it doesn’t belong. But it doesn’t. It’s been three weeks since I moved into this apartment, and everything still smells like the previous tenant's vanilla candles and my own failure.
The hardwood floors creak, making me flinch.
The radiator hisses at 2 a.m. like it's judging me.
I haven't hung anything on the walls. Daniel always handled the decorating.
You have no eye detail or balance, Claire.
He would always finish with…No need to be offended.
It's not an insult. Just an observation.
God, he was such an asshole.
The divorce papers came three days ago, already signed.
Daniel’s name, staring back at me in that perfect, precise handwriting of his.
The same handwriting that wrote too much in the margins of a card I gave him on our first anniversary.
I found it last month, cleaning out the closet of our…
or should I say his house…in Arlington. He'd kept it and annotated it.
Too emotional. Too sensitive. Too many complaints. Never satisfied.
I'd stood there in that closet, the card trembling in my hand, realizing he'd kept it for six years. Not because he treasured it. But as a record of my flaws…weaknesses.
A case file.
I pour the last of the wine into a glass, the same ones we used for dinner parties where Daniel would correct my stories in front of our friends, his mother's condescending smile lingering at the corners of his mouth.
The same smile she gave the time she rearranged my kitchen drawers "to help," when she called me emotional in that tone that meant unfit, when she watched him choose her side over and over, calling it "looking out for him. "
Daniel would redirect the conversation with that measured sigh and knowing look. The same one that said I was embarrassing myself by feeling too openly. His mother had taught him that my feelings were a problem to manage, not a person to love.
The last dinner party, six months ago. I'd been telling the story of our honeymoon in Costa Rica…
how I'd panicked during the zip-lining because the harness didn’t feel secure, how Daniel had gone first and waited at the bottom with his arms crossed while I cried on the platform.
I'd meant it to be funny. Self-deprecating.
I was such a mess, I'd said, laughing. Daniel had set down his wine glass with a soft click that meant he was about to perform patience.
"Claire's remembering it wrong," he'd said, smiling at our friends. "She didn't cry. She refused to go. I had to persuade her for twenty minutes while the guide stood there waiting. It was..." He'd paused, with that same sigh. "It was a lot."
Right away, I felt the room shift. I felt myself become the difficult wife, the too-much wife, the woman who made a man stand in the sun negotiating with a coward.
I'd opened my mouth to say that's not what happened, I did cry, eventually going…but Daniel was already shifting the conversation onto something else, asking Marcus about his promotion. My correction would have been a lot, proving his point. That I was an embarrassment… an inconvenience. In Daniel’s mind, he viewed it as a lack of emotional depth, while to my face, calling it honesty.
My laptop is open on the counter, while the screen glows blue in the dark kitchen. I don't remember opening it. I don't remember typing wilderness survival Montana into the search bar, but there it is, my cursor blinking at the end of the phrase like a heartbeat.
What the fuck are you doing, Claire?
I don't know.
I don't know anything except that this apartment feels too small, the air too suffocating. Knowing if I have to sit here one more minute with Daniel's voice in my head listing my flaws, I will disintegrate into the hardwood.
The search results load. Then, a course in Cedar Ridge, Montana, pops up.
Seven days.
Not for beginners. Not for the faint of heart.
“What the hell,” I say to no one, clicking the link.
The page loads slowly, pixel by pixel, testing my commitment.
After a few minutes, there's a photo of pine trees against granite, a lake so blue it looks fake.
Under that is a list of required gear. Daniel handled the camping.
I was the one who packed the wrong socks, who complained about the weather, who made him stop the car so I could pee in a gas station instead of behind a tree.
You're not an outdoors person, Claire. It's not a value judgment.
My finger hovers over the Register button.
You're too soft, Daniel's voice rings in my ears. It’s too hard. You'll quit. You always do.
I think of the card in the trash, his neat handwriting in the margins.
Every measured sigh, every redirected conversation, every time I made myself smaller to fit inside his approval.
I think of the zip-line platform, the too-loose harness hanging around my hips, the shame of being watched while I felt afraid… embarrassed.
Snap out of it, Claire. It’s in the past. Time to move on.
I scroll down to find a testimonial section.
I came here broken, one reads. I left knowing I could survive myself.
“Here goes nothing.” My finger comes down. Click.
The confirmation page loads. Along with an email that arrives almost instantly.
Welcome to the Cedar Ridge Wilderness Survival Course. Arrive prepared. Leave changed.
I stare at the screen.
The kitchen is still dark except for the glow of the laptop and the ghost of a man who never needed to raise his voice to break me.
I don't cry.
I don't feel anything.
I just sit there in the dark, spinning the two-carate diamond, while wondering what it’s going to feel like becoming someone he would never recognize.
The thought sits there. Heavy.
The ring spins.
Then, all of a sudden, I pull my hand back like I've touched something hot, and the motion carries me to the keyboard, to a new tab, to rental cars. It’s a small act but huge, and I almost laugh.
The cheapest option is a compact with 150,000 miles and a weird ass stain on the seat.
I book it anyway…I have no other choice.
I can't afford a flight, hell, I’m going to barely be able to afford the gas.
Each click feels like I’m chipping away at the woman who would have had to ask Daniel first, needing his approval for the expense, and the confirmation that she'd made the right decision.
At 2:17 a.m., the radiator hisses, but I don't flinch this time. I’ve moved to the kitchen floor, while Adele belts out Rolling in the Deep, my back against the cabinets.
I reach up over my head, grabbing the phone from the counter. I open my photos, scrolling past the wedding folder I can't delete yet, past the dinner parties, to the one of me and my sister the morning of mine and Daniel’s wedding day…
…and I’m there.
My sister shows up to the venue at 6 a.m. with bagels, coffee, and a look on her face I don't understand. Her mascara is already smeared, telling me she’s been crying. She doesn’t give me a chance to ask, just gets straight to the point.
"Claire, you don't have to do this," she says, point-blank. “I promise I’m not being dramatic or overprotective…”
“Mags, what’s going on?”
She sets the coffee down. Hard. "He called you hysterical last month. At brunch. In front of everyone. For getting emotional over dad’s death." Her jaw tightens. “I've watched him hand you back a smaller version of yourself, and you say thank you. That's not love, Claire. That's management.”
“Maggi, I think you might be overreacting a bit. Daniel's good for me. He keeps me...”
"Under his thumb?" she blurts out. Then, her voice turns softer, "Claire. Please."
I hug her tight, smelling her shampoo…the same one we've shared since teenagers, telling her she's being protective, big sister. That he’s a good man who really does love me. He’s stable, secure.
Someone who doesn't lose his keys or forget to pay rent or make me feel like I'm constantly bracing for impact.
She pulls back. Looks at me like she's memorizing my face.
"Promise you’ll call me if you need anything," she says. "Any hour. I don't care. You call me."
“I promise.”
-and I'm back.
Let’s just say, I never kept my promise. I didn't call.
Not when Daniel annotated my anniversary card. Not when his mother rearranged my kitchen. Not when he humiliated me at dinner parties until I withdrew into myself altogether.
My thumb hovers over her name in my contacts. Maggie.
I chicken out, setting an alarm for six hours from now.
That gives me six hours to come up with an excuse as to why I’m going to Montana, figuring out how I’m going to explain the reasons and emotions I don’t even understand myself.
I pull myself up off the floor, placing my palms flat against the counter top, bracing myself. My thumb finds the ring once again. The diamond catching the laptop light, reflecting it against the wall like a signal I never learned to send.
It’s time, Claire.
I stand up straight, shoulders squared, and pull it off. The band drags against my knuckle, and catches before it releases its hold. The thing is heavier than I remember. Or maybe I'm lighter.
Part of me wants to chunk it across the room. But I don't. I'm not there yet.
Instead, I set it on the counter. Finally, letting go of two carats of someone else's empty promise.
And if I’m being completely honest with myself…for the first time in years, I’m not dreading what comes next.