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I read it once, then again, then a third time, as though repetition might somehow change the meaning or reveal some alternative interpretation I had missed. But the words remained the same, stark and cruel in that glowing rectangle I held in my trembling hands.<\/p>\n
She had used his phone to send this. She had picked up his device, scrolled to my contact, typed out this message, and hit send, knowing exactly what she was doing. This was not some drunken mistake or a text sent to the wrong person. This was deliberate. This was Amelia Blackwood announcing her conquest and making absolutely certain I understood that she had taken something that belonged to me.<\/p>\n
I sat there in the darkness of our bedroom, the room we had painted together three years ago after debating for two weeks whether the color was dove gray or silver mist. The ceiling fan we had installed last summer during a heat wave rotated slowly above me\u2014the same fan we had argued about because Benjamin thought it was unnecessary and I had insisted we needed it. The curtains we had chosen from six different samples spread across our dining room table now hung motionless in the still air.<\/p>\n