I’m sorry I had to leave early, but it’ll be easier this way. Please don’t feel bad. You didn’t do anything wrong. After all, you warned me from the start. I just didn’t listen as well as I should have, I guess. I let go, trusted what I was feeling, because it honestly didn’t seem as though Shiloh was still standing between us. What we had felt authentic—at least to me. But I’m just a naive Mennonite girl at heart, and I obviously misread the clues. Maybe it’s because I’ve never loved anyone else.

Thanks for helping me through the aftermath of the accident. Please don’t think I’m angry, because I’m not. What happened at the restaurant was a wake-up call that needed to happen, but I do ask you to please give me some space so that I can heal and pull my life back together.

Regardless of anything else, I wish you every happiness.

Tia.

P.S. Please sell the trees and the earrings and donate the proceeds to the humanities center. I don’t have a lot of money right now—I don’t know how long my savings will have to last—but I would like to contribute in this way.

“Fuck,” he muttered as he sank onto one of the barstools. Her inherent kindness came through even now, which cut him even deeper.

His vision began to blur with tears. Propping his head on his fist, he squeezed his eyes closed and pushed the note away. He’d been a fool to do what he’d done. He hadn’t even meant it. It’d been a stupid, knee-jerk reaction to seeing people he associated with his former life, when he was married to Shiloh. But that one thoughtless moment had cost him the best thing to happen to him in a long time.

Fortunately, she’d been gone long enough that there were no paparazzi camped outside her condo—although Tia couldn’t imagine they’d be there at one in the morning on New Year’s Day, even if she hadn’t left the area.

Breathing a sigh of relief to see everything so dark and quiet, despite the revelry associated with this particular holiday, Tia let herself through the gate, parked in her spot and hauled in her stuff.

“I’m home,” she called out for no particular reason. She was entirely alone, didn’t own so much as a plant—she’d given her succulents to her neighbor before she went to Silver Springs—but it seemed appropriate.

She dumped her suitcase in the middle of the floor and told herself to get in bed and try to sleep. She needed to shut out the memories banging around in her head of Seth and what Christmas in Silver Springs had been like and gain some relief from the pain in her chest.