Keeping The Eight Million For Myself

The moment my husband crushed his third cigarette into the crystal ashtray and told me he wanted a divorce, the smell of bleach hit me like a physical blow.

It was a phantom scent, a sensory ghost from a future that hadn't happened yet—or rather, a past life that had already ended. It was the smell of the ten years I’d spent playing nurse to him in sterile hospital rooms. It was the smell of the air in my daughter’s lungs when she pointed a finger at me and called me a "sinner."