“Both of you need to leave my property now,” I said quietly.
Tyler’s voice cracked audibly. “Eighteen years, Debra. You’re actually doing this.”
“You did this,” I said. “I’m simply refusing to clean it up behind you anymore.”
Margaret stood beside me, arms crossed, the folder still sitting open on the table between us.
Rachel grabbed her purse and walked out of my kitchen without another word. Tyler followed her a moment later, more slowly, moving like a man who had only just now understood, fully and completely, that he had been the one chosen against in all of this, not the other way around.
I closed the door behind them both and turned the lock.
Three days passed before the house felt like mine again in any real sense. On the morning of the fourth day, I stood at the kitchen counter and reached for a single mug from the cabinet, just one, and poured my coffee, and set the pot back down, and watched the steam curl gently up from one cup sitting alone on a clean, quiet counter.
