Mark’s foundation helped block it.
When she told me, I did not cry.
I simply stared at the wall until the old Jessica—the one who had baked Evan banana bread when he was stressed, who had ironed his blue shirts for big meetings, who had believed marriage meant standing together when life turned ugly—quietly folded herself away.
In her place, someone new sat up straighter.
Someone sore, pale, stitched, and furious.
Two weeks after surgery, I was discharged.
I had nowhere to go.
That was the most humiliating sentence in the world.
My house was legally half mine, Denise reminded me. I could return. Evan could not simply throw me out.
But the idea of sleeping in that bed, walking through rooms where Lena might have touched my coffee mugs and stood barefoot on my kitchen tiles, made nausea rise in my throat.
“My sister’s apartment has stairs,” I told Clara as she packed extra gauze into a paper bag. “I can’t manage stairs yet.”
“There are rehabilitation suites,” she said too casually.
I narrowed my eyes.
“Funded by who?”
She smiled.
“I didn’t say anything.”
Mark appeared ten minutes later.
“No,” I said before he opened his mouth.
He paused in the doorway.
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You have a face that says you’re about to offer something expensive.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“I wasn’t aware of that face.”
“You definitely have it.”
He entered with his hands in his pockets. “There is a recovery residence connected to the foundation. Private rooms. Nurses on call. Physical therapy. Patients stay until they can safely return home.”
“I’m not one of your projects.”
“No.”
“I’m not Anna.”
His face changed.
The words had come out harsher than I intended, but I refused to take them back entirely. They were necessary. For both of us.
Mark was quiet for a moment.
“No,” he said. “You’re not.”
“I need to know you understand that.”
“I do.”
“Do you?”
His gaze met mine.
“Anna hated tulips,” he said.
I blinked.
