Page 47 of The Art of Ruin

So I step back first.

“Dinner in ten.”

Then I turn toward the house before I can examine too closely why seeing her sitting there in a plastic tiara with my daughter’s crayons scattered around her suddenly feels far more dangerous than hostile shareholders ever did.

6.Casey

By the following Saturday morning,the walls of the annex are starting to feel a little too close. Not because the space isn’t beautiful, because it really is a lovely, tranquil little space. It’s quiet, comfortable, private in a way I desperately needed a week ago when everything inside me still felt scraped raw. But I’ve spent most of the week orbiting the same small routines.

Breakfast with Letty.

Preschool pickup.

Laundry.

Dinner.

Bath time negotiations that somehow require the strategic skills of a hostage mediator.

Then retreating to my rooms before I linger too long in spaces that don’t belong to me.

Routine helps.

When you live where you work, the lines can blur too easily if you aren’t careful. It becomes simple to let the job consume your entire world without realizing it’s happening. And lately, if I’m honest with myself, I’ve probably been hiding inside the structure of it a little too comfortably.

And this morning, when I wake to sunlight filtering softly through the curtains and realize I don’t have to be anywhere for several hours, the thought settles heavily enough in my chest that I can’t ignore it anymore. Restlessness has always been dangerous for me. My mind doesn’t know how to leave things alone when it has too much quiet to work with.

So I decide to leave the house and go and explore New York more. Maybe do a little Christmas shopping. Just long enough to remind myself I still exist outside grief and routines and careful professionalism. Reaching into the cupboard in my tiny kitchen, I grab a to-go cup and fill it with hot chocolate. I’m not spending a fortune on drinks out when I can take one with me.

My mom worked too hard for too many years for me to ever feel comfortable wasting money on five-dollar hot chocolate.

She spent most of my childhood juggling jobs, stretching every dollar until it screamed, and somehow still made our tiny apartment feel warm and safe. I used to swear she could make a single chicken feed us for a week through sheer force of will alone.

She did everything she could to give me a better life. Then, just when her life finally started easing up a little, just when retirement stopped feeling impossible, cancer swept in and stole her before she got to enjoy any of it.

I think watching that happen ruined my ability to spend money casually forever. It’s why I’ll never waste my time on a man who doesn’t value me, no matter how hard walking away can be.

My gaze catches on the black Amex still sitting on my little kitchen counter.

I haven’t used it, which is ridiculous because Adriano gave it to me specifically for Letty, and I know refusing to touch it now is more about my own stubbornness than principle.

Still, every time I look at it, something twists awkwardly in my chest.

Not because of the money.

God knows Jasper spent enough on me over the years that expensive things shouldn’t feel emotionally loaded anymore.

But this feels different somehow. This feels like taking care of his own. It’s as natural as breathing for Adriano to provide, to protect. It’s not showy or overcompensating for absences.

Jasper’s extravagance had felt romantic in the way expensive things often do when you didn’t grow up around them—at first.

Rooftop dinners. Last-minute weekends away. Jewelry handed across white tablecloths like scenes from films my mom used to laugh at while folding laundry at midnight.

But eventually the spending started to feel strangely untethered from real intimacy, like he kept trying to bridge emotional distance with things instead of honesty.

And worse than that, sometimes accepting it makes something uncomfortable twist low in my stomach. Because no matter how beautiful the gift was, part of me could still hear my mother reminding me that nobody spends money carelessly unless they have too much of it or too little respect for it.

But Adriano hadn’t handed me the card like that.