Silence pulsed. When he spoke again, the impatient annoyance had left his voice and he sounded serious. “Okay. You’re right about all of it. I behaved badly, and I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve it, and I shouldn’t have done it.”

She told him, “That’s what you should have said on Monday.”

She could hear his slow, staggered breathing and began to count. Four. Seven… One side of her mouth lifted. He was using the four-seven-eight breathing technique.

She’d gotten under his skin.

Good. He deserved it.

When he finally spoke, he sounded brisk and calm. “Is that why you called?”

“No, but I’m glad I got it off my chest.” She ran her gaze over the dealership’s busy parking lot. “Austin accepted the divorce settlement approximately ninety minutes after he received the papers. My lawyer is filing the papers this afternoon. I’ll let you know when the divorce is finalized. That’s all.”

“Wait. I’d like to…”

A younger, softer Molly might have listened. She would have been eager to please and anxious to smooth things over. But she wasn’t that younger, softer Molly anymore. She felt no need to contort herself into another shape just to fit other people’s desires or expectations.

So she interrupted. “I don’t care what you would like. I don’t want to hear from you. I don’t want to think about you. I don’t want to be manipulated by you anymore. If I have something to say to you, I’ll call. Otherwise, leave me the hell alone.”

She hung up, glared at the phone, and held her breath.

It remained silent, as well it should.

After a few moments, she started the Cherokee again. She felt strange and hollow, as if all her purpose had been cut out. Back at her apartment, she played desultorily with cooking a bolognese sauce, but her heart wasn’t in it.

She felt like she was waiting for something else to happen. Things felt incomplete, like a lump of half-molded clay on a sculptor’s table. The true face of her new reality had yet to emerge. There had been no real resolution between her and Austin, just a phone call from Nina to say her marriage was over. While that was a victory of sorts, it felt odd to not speak with him.

Not that she wanted to speak with him—in fact, the opposite was true. She didn’t miss him, not in the slightest.

The more time passed, the more she realized how much of a habit living with him had become. Austin had been part of the list of “shoulds” that had dictated her life. She should be married to him, or so she had thought, just as she should be a dutiful daughter, despite the fact that her mother treated her with a lack of loving warmth and a wealth of judgment.