PART 14 – The Last Page
The days following that merciless reckoning flew by in a blur of loneliness and silent despair. I found a small, damp attic room on the edge of town, far from the chic streets where I had once lived with my family. My bank accounts had been cleaned out, my credit cards blocked, and my friends—the few I dared call—soon stopped letting me know anything after a few brief phone calls. They had already heard the official version of the divorce: I was the cheater, the deceiver brought down by his own deeds.
On a rainy Tuesday afternoon, exactly one week after our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, a single envelope lay on the doormat of my attic room. No sender, no postage stamp. Only my name, written in that same handwriting I had come to fear.
With trembling fingers, I tore the envelope open. There was no stationery inside, but a single Polaroid photo.
The photo had been taken the day before. It showed my ex-wife sitting on the terrace of that same Olive Garden restaurant, smiling with a glass of wine in her hand opposite an unknown man in a tailored suit. They were looking at each other with the look of two people who had just closed a brilliant business deal.
On the back of the photo was written in pencil:
"Lesson one: Never underestimate a woman who dares to play all her cards at the right time. Lesson two: The bill has been paid."
I let the photo drop onto the wooden floor, walked to the small window of the attic room, and looked out over the gray roofs of the city. The rain tapped incessantly against the glass, just like that evening in the restaurant. Only then did I truly realize that I had never won, and that from the very beginning I had never had a chance of winning.
The woman who already knew everything had finished the game. And I was only just beginning to realize that I was the only player who had never known a match was underway.
