She’d managed to rent office space and hire a couple of guys, but that wasn’t enough. She spent her days feeling slightly sick to her stomach. She was avoiding her friends, she was missing Thaddeus more than she’d thought possible. She was a mess and there was an uncomfortable sameness to all the feelings swirling through her.

“I’m tired of myself,” she whispered, then said it again, more loudly. “I am tired of myself. Of all of this. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t be sad. I can’t be alone and afraid and stuck and all those things. I can’t. I won’t. I won’t.”

She turned and headed for the front door, grabbing her car keys along the way. Forty minutes later, she was back home. She carried in a dozen moving boxes and began taking family photos off the wall.

She wrapped them carefully, placing them standing up in the box. Picture by picture, she emptied the hallway wall. She didn’t linger, didn’t pause to trace the lines of Stuart’s face, she kept moving until they were all packed. Then she stared at the empty space and waited for her heart to break.

Only it didn’t. It stayed right there in her chest, beating steadily, reminding her that she was alive and healthy and still relatively young. So what was next?

By three that afternoon, all the pictures in the house were packed. By six, she’d taken down the posters in Stuart’s bedroom, had packed up his trophies and started a donation pile in the living room. By seven, she was tired and sad, but functional. She went into the kitchen, poured herself a shot of tequila and downed it in a single gulp, then she reached for her cell phone.

One of her sources of income was local real estate agents who hired her to do a quick spruce on a house ready to go to market. She knew who she liked and who she thought was fair. After scrolling through her contact list, she pushed a button.

“Felicity, it’s Unity. I would like to talk to you about a listing for a house here in Willowbrook.”

“Great. Let me grab a pen so I can take some notes. Who are the owners?”

“I am. It’s my house and I want to put it on the market.”

“I’m fainting. This is me fainting.”

Ellen threw herself back on the sofa and closed her eyes. Unity’s wan chuckle drew her upright.

“You’re really that shocked?” Unity asked.

Ellen stared at her. “That you’re selling Stuart’s house? Yes, I’m shocked. Or stunned. We can go with that.”

When Ellen had called her friend to ask if they could get together and talk, she’d never expected Unity to be the one with the unexpected announcement. But she had been. Before Ellen could even bring up Keith, Unity had said she was listing the house. As in selling it. Just like that.