**Chapter 67**

ELISE'S POV

I told myself I couldn’t just burn everything down.

One afternoon on a patio didn’t erase fifteen years. It didn’t erase the house, the mortgage, the quiet understanding of how the dishwasher should be loaded and which drawer held the good kitchen towels. It didn’t erase Nathan. It didn’t erase the version of myself I had spent over a decade building — the woman who kept everything running so smoothly that no one ever had to ask if she was okay. Men made mistakes. That was what I kept repeating while I folded laundry that didn’t need folding and wiped counters that were already clean. He...