Page 48 of Ricardo

The thought makes me smile.

I remove the photo from the frame.

The apartment remains quiet.

Nothing happens.

No one appears to demand an explanation. No one asks me whether I have considered how this looks. No one tells me I am being difficult.

It is just a piece of glossy paper in my hand.

I tear it in half.

The sound is small and sharp. And satisfying.

I tear it again, then again, until Harrison’s perfect tuxedo and my perfect smile are in pieces in my palm. I carry them to the trash beneath the sink and drop them in. Then, for good measure, I dropped the frame in too.

Then I stand there, breathing harder than the task deserves.

“Good riddance,” I say aloud.

My voice sounds strange in the apartment.

Still, it helps.

I wash my hands, although there is nothing on them—it's symbolic—and return to the living room.

I look at the box on the floor. All the remnants of my previous life are in it. I should do something with that, too. Chuck those as well.

I'm supposed to start small. Maybe I should hold off on that until another time.

“Hell, it's not a rule,” I say aloud. “I can do what I want.”

I sit right there on the floor, pull the box close to me, and start pawing through it.

I pull out the gala programs first.

Most of them are harmless. Some are even worth keeping professionally. Children’s hospital benefit. Legal aid fund. Women’s shelter capital campaign. Literacy initiative. I worked hard on those events. I cared about them. The money mattered, even when the people giving it made me want to bang my forehead against a wall.

I set those in a neat pile.

Then come the ones from Harrison’s orbit.

Campaign dinner.

Policy roundtable.

Private donor reception.

Congressional exploratory committee launch.

My name appears in small print on several of them. Sometimes as event chair. Sometimes on a host committee. Sometimes beside his, which was always the point. Harrison Winthrop III and Julia O’Brien. A clean line connecting two families, two networks, two useful collections of people.

I did not understand, at first, how much he liked that line.

Or perhaps I did understand and enjoyed being wanted enough to ignore why.

I put those programs in a different pile, one I mentally label “trash.”