“Laura, I’m changing. I’m going to church. I realize now that money isn’t everything. I miss our talks…”
I burned the letter without reading past the first paragraph. He didn’t miss our talks. He missed the lifestyle I provided. He was a man who had flown first class and drunk five-hundred-dollar wine, now scanning groceries and living in a studio apartment that smelled of mildew.
One rainy Tuesday, a year after the discovery, I was stopped at a red light downtown. I looked out the window and saw a man walking in the rain without an umbrella. He was hunched over, wearing a cheap, ill-fitting jacket.
It was Richard.
He looked ten years older. His hair was thinning. The arrogant strut was gone, replaced by the shuffle of the defeated. He was waiting for the bus. The Richard I first knew wouldn’t be caught dead on a bus.
The light turned green. I didn’t honk. I didn’t roll down the window to shout an insult. I just pressed the accelerator of my Mercedes and drove past him. He didn’t see me. He was too busy looking at his shoes.
That was the moment I knew I had truly won. Not because he was miserable, but because I felt absolutely nothing seeing him. No anger, no sadness—just indifference. He was a stranger, a cautionary tale in a wet jacket.
And Monica? I checked her Facebook profile once, a moment of weakness. It was a stream of complaints.
“So tired.”
“Why don’t men step up?”
“Need a babysitter who works for cheap.”
There were photos of the baby. He looked like Richard. Poor kid. I hoped he would grow up to be better than his parents, but the odds were stacked against him.
I closed the laptop. Their story was over in my book. They were just footnotes now—ugly, messy footnotes in the chapter before my real life began.
They say the best revenge is living well, but I think the best revenge is rediscovering who you were before the vampires drained you.
I sold the house. The colonial mansion with the gold streamers and the bad memories was too big for one person. I didn’t want to walk past the guest room where Monica had slept or the kitchen where Richard had cooked his guilt steaks. I bought a modern glass-walled house overlooking the Sound. It was full of light, clean lines, no dark corners for secrets to hide.
I started a new foundation. This one focused on financial literacy for women. I wanted to teach women how to protect their assets, how to spot financial abuse, how to ensure that no man could ever do to them what Richard tried to do to me. I called it the Phoenix Fund—a little inside joke for myself, reclaiming the name Richard had used for his shell company.
My parents were my rock. My father, the tough-as-nails businessman, softened in the aftermath. We spent weekends gardening together. He never said, “I told you so.” He just said, “I’m proud of you.”
And the baby issue—the “dried-up womb” comment that had haunted me—I went to therapy. A lot of therapy. I unpacked the shame I had carried for not being able to conceive. I realized that my value wasn’t located in my uterus. I had so much love to give, and there were so many ways to give it.
I became a court-appointed special advocate, a CASA, for children in the foster system. I used my resources to help kids who had been abandoned by parents like Richard and Monica.
One afternoon, I was at a fundraiser for the new foundation. I was wearing a red dress, a color I never wore with Richard because he said it was “too aggressive.” I felt powerful.
A man approached me. He was older, distinguished, with kind eyes.
“Laura Reynolds?” he asked. “I’m David. I’ve heard a lot about your work with the foster program.”
We talked—not about money or business deals or status. We talked about books. We talked about the ocean. He didn’t scan the room looking for someone more important to talk to. He looked at me. He didn’t know about my money. He didn’t know about the scandal. He just saw a woman in a red dress who spoke with passion.
“Would you like to get coffee sometime?” he asked.
My instinct—the instinct Richard had instilled in me—was to say no, to protect myself, to assume everyone wanted something. But then I remembered the woman who drove past Richard at the bus stop. That woman wasn’t afraid anymore.
“I’d love to,” I said.
