I found the lease on a Tuesday.
I wasn't looking for it. I was going through Shane's home office for the insurance renewal—something boring, something domestic—when I found the folder tucked behind a row of tax binders. A lease agreement. Twelve months. A building three blocks north of our penthouse. The tenant name was a shell company I didn't recognize, but the emergency contact line had Shane's cell number printed in clean black type.
I stood there for a long moment. The air conditioning hummed. Outside, a siren passed and faded.
I photographed every page. Then I put the folder back exactly the way I found it. Edges flush. Binder clip at the same angle. I went back to the kitchen and finished making coffee.
That afternoon I called my father's legal team. Not my own phone. The burner I had bought for cash at a pharmacy on the east side. I asked for a name. They gave me one. A private investigator, quiet and thorough, the kind who sent encrypted files and never left voicemails.
I forwarded him the photos.
Then I texted Shane a picture of the pasta I made for dinner, with a little heart.
He sent back three heart emojis. He was home by seven.
---
Cecilia came back into my life the way she always did—like she had never left.
I was the one who brought her in. That was the plan. I called her first. I suggested the gallery opening, a small one in Chelsea, the kind of event where it looked natural to show up with a girlfriend. I wore cream. I told her the dress code was cocktail casual. I picked her up myself.
She hugged me in the lobby of her building. Long and tight, her chin on my shoulder, her voice going soft and wet at the edges. "I missed you so much, Stella. You have no idea."
"I missed you too," I said. I rubbed her back twice, the way I always used to. "Come on. Let's get you a drink."
She looked good. Thinner than before, sharper in the jaw, but she had learned how to dress again. A black wrap dress that night. She played the grateful, fragile ex-convict with the kind of ease that almost impressed me. She dabbed the corner of her eye when someone asked how she was adjusting. She held my arm when we moved through the crowd. She said things like, "Estrella never gave up on me," and "I don't know what I'd do without her."
Everyone believed her.
I watched her eyes find Shane across the room. It took her less than thirty seconds. His back was to us, talking to a man in a gray suit, and still she found him. Her chin lifted just slightly. A small, private adjustment, like a compass needle settling north.
I turned to the woman beside me and said something about the sculpture on the wall. I laughed at the right moment. I kept my glass level.
---
The camellias started three weeks later.
A dinner at the Calloway's. Cecilia arrived in a silk slip dress, ivory with a scattered camellia print, the petals painted in pale pink and white. She touched the fabric when she walked in, smoothing it over her hip, and said to the room, "I found it at this little vintage place in the West Village. Aren't camellias Estrella's favorite?"
She looked right at me when she said it.
"They are," I said. I smiled. "You look beautiful."
She smiled back. There was nothing warm in it.
I knew what she was doing. The camellia was mine and Shane's—a pressed one from a library book, a joke between two kids who had nothing. He had given me a camellia bookmark on the day we got together. I still had it in the drawer of my nightstand. I had not thrown it away yet. I wasn't sure why.
Now she was wearing it on her body like a trophy.
I reached for the champagne bottle and refilled her glass. My hand was completely steady. Not a tremor. Not a drop on the tablecloth.
"I'm so glad you're back," I said.
Across the table, Shane watched me refill her glass. Something moved behind his eyes. Relief, maybe. Or guilt. With Shane, the two had started to look the same.
I set the bottle down and picked up my own glass.
I had the lease photos. I had the PI's first report. I had a folder on my laptop, password-protected, growing heavier every week. I had patience I hadn't known I owned until the moment I watched white petals scatter on a Midtown sidewalk.
Cecilia laughed at something someone said. The camellia print caught the candlelight.
I watched her and I thought: keep going. Wear the dress. Refill your own glass next time.
I am almost ready.
