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I had a walk-through at the house with Perry’s and my lawyer the following day to gather it all.

I genuinely didn’t want any of it.

But there was a substantial amount of money in jewelry I’d been gifted over the years. So I figured I could sit on it all for a while, then pawn it and use the money for studio time. Or toward building my own studio.

I reached for the clubhouse door, then stepped into a chorus of female voices screaming their congratulations to me.

And there they were.

The girls’ club.

All three iterations of it.

Generations of women who showed up to celebrate my freedom.

Some had been through bad situations with men who were supposed to love them, only for the same men to show them just how untrue that was. Others had survived things I could never even fathom. Others still had no such experiences but showed up in solidarity with me finally getting my freedom.

Sure, Perry was dead and—I assumed—buried. But the divorce was the proof I needed that I was finally free of him. Finally able to fully move on.

“I tried to remind them that this might be overkill,” Cain said, appearing out of the crowd of women sometime later.

“It is. But I love it,” I said as he pulled me into his arms and pressed a quick kiss to my lips.

“How do you feel?”

“Lighter. I have to collect my belongings. But that’s all. It’s over-over.”

There’d been no signs that the cops were looking at me or my mom. The last time I’d gotten an update, they were still looking for the loan shark he’d been working with. Though, “looking for” might have been an overstatement. I was pretty sure no one was wasting any time looking for Perry.

Now that my divorce was final, Hope could stop searching for him as well. She’d been drafting up reports for where she’d been looking since I’d hired her right after officially being told about his disappearance.

It looked good to the outside world, his company, our lawyers, and the court.

But no one expected a woman to keep paying a private investigator to look for their divorced spouse.

The party grew loud around us as the guys showed up, the music changed, and the drinks really started flowing.

“How do you want to celebrate this big day?” Cain asked.

I shot him a smile, reached for his hand, and pulled him with me toward the basement, then led him toward the ladder.

“The glass room?” he asked, following me up.

“I can’t think of a better place to have sex for the first time as an officially single woman,” I said, slamming and locking the hatch behind him once he joined me. “And it is too cold out for anyone to be out there looking up at us,” I said, already climbing on his lap.

Cain - 3 years

I was covered in sawdust when Georgie came in the back door of the house, peeling clay out from underneath her nail.

She was not a neat potter.

Even when wearing her apron, she ended up with clay up her arms, on her pants, her shoes, on her face, in her hair.

When I came across the house, I knew it was the one for us when I saw it had an extra-large insulated shed not far from the house. A couple weeks of construction, one kiln delivery, and a metric ton of clay later, she had the at-home pottery studio she’d always wanted.

It didn’t matter to me that the house itself was an absolute money pit that I’d spent endless hours working on and stressing over. She had her studio. And we had a primary bedroom. And a primary bathroom that worked. Some of the time. That was one of my many works in progress.

“Oh, wow. It looks like a kitchen again!” Georgie said as she looked around the kitchen that had been mostly gutted just that morning. But I had the new cabinets up and the countertops in place. Next step was the stain and the backsplash. After that, it was just the appliances.