Chapter 8 - The Move

By November, the autumn leaves had turned brilliant shades of amber and crimson across Columbus.

I stood in the driveway of the townhouse on Oakridge Drive, watching the professional movers load my furniture and boxes into the back of a large white semi-trailer. The house was completely empty now. The walls were bare, the floors swept clean, and the echo of our three years together had been scrubbed away by professional cleaners.

My mother’s minivan was parked in the driveway, packed with June’s crib, her stroller, and a mountain of diapers and formula.

Gavin wasn't there. He had already moved into a small, sterile two-bedroom apartment near his office building—an apartment he was paying for entirely on his own salary, without his mother to manage his budget or his sister to sponge off his bank accounts. According to mutual acquaintances, Lorraine had spent the last two weeks telling everyone in their social circle that I was a "calculating shrew" who had trapped an innocent man and ruined a poor girl's life over a minor accounting error.

Let them talk. In construction, gossip doesn't pour concrete.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was a text from a former colleague at my old construction firm—a senior project manager named Marcus Vance (no relation to the lawyer), who had heard I was wrapping up my maternity leave and getting back on my feet.

Marcus: "Hey Claire, we’ve got a massive commercial logistics center breaking ground in Dublin next month. We need a senior coordinator who knows how to keep subcontractors in line and budgets bulletproof. Interested in coming on as lead?"

I looked at the screen, smiled, and typed back: Count me in. When do we start pouring the foundation?

As I walked over to the minivan, buckled June securely into her car seat, and climbed into the driver's seat of my Subaru, I took one last look at the townhouse.

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The key was sitting on the kitchen counter inside, exactly where it belonged.

I put the car in drive, pulled out of the driveway, and didn't look in the rearview mirror once.