Chapter 2: The Plan Was Never Mine

I closed the laptop, deleted the browser history, and walked back into the living room.

Tessa took one look at my face and knew something was wrong.

“Claire, don’t do anything rash. Grant just has a bad way of expressing himself. We can sit down and talk this through.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.” I looked at Grant. “I’m not going to Iowa.”

The room fell silent.

Grant just frowned, as if he were dealing with a minor deviation from the plan.

“You’re being emotional, so I’m not going to argue with you. In a few days, once you’ve calmed down, you’ll go, just like we planned.”

He even smiled.

“You don’t have a job lined up, and you don’t have anywhere else to live. Don’t blow up your own life just to prove a point.”

He was that sure I had nowhere else to go.

I turned and went back to my room, but messages immediately started lighting up my phone.

Friends were forwarding the Boston apartment listing Tessa had posted.

Floor-to-ceiling windows. A gym. A rooftop garden.

In the comments, people congratulated her and Grant on being a “power couple” and asked when they were throwing a housewarming party.

An old friend sent me a private message.

“Wasn’t Grant always your biggest defender? He used to say every decision about the future would put you first.”

I stared at the words and suddenly remembered my first few months in Chicago, when I worked late into the night and Grant would always save me a hot meal.

I was terrified of getting on the wrong train, so he drew me a map of the city by hand, connecting my school, my job, and his apartment with a single red line.

Back then, he used to say, “One day, we’ll have a home with both our names on it.”

But now, standing beside the home with his name on it, was Tessa.

I reopened his laptop.

In his cloud drive was a folder labeled Boston Plan.

Apartment viewings, job applications, furniture lists. Months of planning, and the only participants were Grant and Tessa.

The folder’s creation date was a year ago.

I opened our three-person group chat and scrolled back.

One part of the conversation had been deleted.

But I remembered it. A photo Tessa had posted when she went to Boston “on vacation” last year. She was standing in front of an apartment building, saying the view was nice.

That building was the one they had just rented.

This wasn’t a last-minute decision.

It wasn’t about his career.

They had spent a year preparing for their future, and a year erasing me from it.

I shut the laptop and called a friend who worked as a lawyer.

That night, a Notice of Termination of Cohabitation and Division of Property, compliant with Illinois law, arrived in my inbox.

The next day, Grant and Tessa went out to celebrate.

I called a moving company and opened the box that had been marked for Iowa.

Clothes, my ID, old photographs, the necklace my mother had left me.

Everything that belonged to me, I took back.

The cookware, the cleaning supplies, the bed linens Grant’s father had specifically requested—I didn’t touch any of it.

The life he had planned for me, reduced to a single box of useless odds and ends.

The day they left for Boston, I went to the station, too.

The moment Grant saw me, the corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk.

“I knew you’d come around.”

Tessa opened her arms in surprise, as if to hug me.

“Claire, we’re still family.”

I took a step back, avoiding her touch, and handed the legal envelope to Grant.

“These are for you.”

His smile froze.

I picked up my suitcase and turned to Tessa.

“I wish you both all the best in Boston.”