Chapter 6 - Heading West
At that exact moment, Amy was sitting in the back of the town car as it accelerated toward JFK International Airport.
Her destination wasn't a hotel in Manhattan. It wasn't a temporary rental in the Hamptons where mutual friends might spot her. Her destination was Portland, Oregon. From there, she would rent a car and drive straight to Newport—a quiet, rugged coastal town nestled against the Pacific Northwest, a place Daniel had never heard her mention, let alone visited.
Years earlier, her college roommate and closest friend, Claire, had once joked over a bottle of wine: “If you ever need somewhere nobody in Manhattan will ever think to look, come west. The ocean cleans out everything.”
Claire was currently stationed overseas helping her aging father recover from major surgery, but she had kept her cozy, fully furnished apartment above a historic harbor bookstore in Newport vacant for visiting friends. It was small, weathered by sea salt, and filled with old books and the sound of crashing waves.
No Harrison employees. No corporate gossip columnists. No society galas. No luxury towers.
And, most importantly, no Daniel.
Amy rested one hand gently over her stomach, feeling the steady, quiet rhythm of her own breathing as the glittering skyline of Manhattan dissolved into the rainy darkness behind them.
For the first time in months, her lungs felt full. She could breathe.
Her phone buzzed in her lap.
The screen lit up with Daniel’s name. Incoming Call.
She watched it ring, her expression completely detached. After ten rings, it stopped.
A text banner slid down the screen: Amy, please call me. Whatever you think happened at the gala, we can fix it.
Another message popped up a moment later: Don’t disappear like this. Talk to me.
Amy stared at those words—Don’t disappear like this—and a strange, melancholic laugh slipped past her lips. It was soft, quiet, almost broken.
"Funny," she whispered to the empty car.
Because Daniel had been disappearing from their marriage for years, piece by piece, flight by flight, distraction by distraction. He had simply never imagined that the day would come when she learned how to do it too.
With a calm, deliberate motion, Amy pressed the side button on her phone, turning the device completely off. The screen went dark, plunging her reflection into shadow.
She leaned her head against the cool glass window, watching the rain streak across the pane. She had left her marriage behind in a ballroom of flashing lights and hollow promises. She had left her ring in the hands of a mother-in-law who finally understood what her son had destroyed.
May you like
She had left everything she knew. But as she touched the cream-colored envelope resting safely inside her purse, she knew a profound truth.
She hadn't left alone.
