The home is beautiful. Seven-thousand-plus square feet. Three-car garage. Master suite with spa and sauna, plus his-and-her walk-in closets. A complete fitness room with French doors and balcony. A media room. A game room. A wine cellar. Their kids have grown and left. It’s just the two of them. And he’s always gone.

“It’s going to be gorgeous,” I tell Sarah even as she keeps looking at her husband, Henry, as if trying to catch him in a moment of enthusiasm. But he never once shows a hint of excitement or pleasure in the home being built.

He’s letting her build the house because he doesn’t know what else to do with her.

She’s building the house because she’s lonely as hell.

And this is exactly what I can’t and won’t do anymore. Sarah’s a lovely, lonely fifty-year-old woman, but building a seven-thousand-square-foot home won’t make her happy, and paying for an expensive lakefront home won’t make Henry a better husband.

While I know I could do a good job with the house, I’m not interested enough to spend the next year on a project with the couple. I honestly can’t bear Sarah’s loneliness or his apathy. I don’t want to feel her loneliness or his apathy. I’ve felt enough loneliness and apathy of my own.

There are other ways to live, other ways to relate, and I’m going to find them.

As I drive back over 520 to Madison Park, I look at the indigo sky glittering with stars and the bright lights of Seattle’s skyline. I can see the outline of the Space Needle and the lights of Montlake Bridge and Husky Stadium. Even though I’ve lived in Seattle nearly fifteen years now, I never get tired of the view. I love the way jagged peaks rush toward the sky, framing low pewter lakes and lavender bodies of water. The mountains here are everywhere—the Cascades, the Olympic Range, Mt. Baker, Mt. Rainier. I love the white ferries that cross the Sound. Love how the city has sprung up between the lakes and the Sound.

Living in Seattle has given me confidence, and in this past year I’ve grown even stronger. Sometimes I’m intimidated by this new, powerful me. The me who refuses to settle for second best, the me who won’t take a number and wait in line anymore, the me who insists on happiness, not acceptance.

This new me reminds me of Jessica as a toddler. At two, the moment Jessica realized she could assert herself, she did. Her discovery, that she could walk away from me—run from me, argue with me—filled her with power and pleasure. As well as fear.

It doesn’t take long for the omnipotent two-year-old to transform into the terrified toddler. So much freedom! So much independence! So much danger.