I was ten feet from the elevator when I saw her. Courtney Osborne, my ex-wife, stood frozen by the water fountain. She’d aged in three years; new lines were etched around her mouth, and her auburn hair now showed threads of gray she’d never have allowed before. She wore hospital scrubs, which surprised me. The last I’d heard, she was managing a boutique in Scottsdale.

“Cole,” her voice cracked on my name.

“Courtney.” I kept my tone neutral, professional. We hadn’t spoken since the final decree. Our marriage had ended cleanly, if painfully, a mutual acknowledgment that love had calcified into resentment somewhere between my eighty-hour work weeks and her complete inability to handle solitude.