Page 120 of The Humiliated Wife

The manila envelope sat next to it like an accusation, thick with legal documents that would officially end what she'd once thought would last forever.

Fiona pulled the papers out slowly and spread them across the table.Petition for Dissolution of Marriage.The clinical language made her chest tight—all those legal terms for what had once been love.

She flipped through pages of asset division and spousal support calculations. Dean's generosity was all there in black and white: the apartment, the monthly income, the trust fund that would ensure she never had to worry about money again.

It was more than fair. More than generous. It was the kind of settlement that would make other divorcing women weep with envy.

But all Fiona could think about was the woman who'd signed a different set of papers two years ago. The one who'd worn white lace and promised forever with stars in her eyes, believing she'd found her person. Her safe place. Her home.

That woman had been so naive it was almost embarrassing to remember her. The way she'd trusted completely, loved without reservation, given Dean every vulnerable piece of herself because she'd believed—God, she'd really believed—that he would guard those pieces like treasure.

She'd thought their marriage was built on respect. On partnership. On the kind of deep, abiding love that made people grow old together and still hold hands in grocery stores.

Instead, it had been built on Dean's amusement at her simplicity. His condescending affection for the small-town girl who didn't know any better. Her trust had been content, her vulnerability entertainment, her love a convenient source of material for his online brand.

Fiona picked up the pen.

She wasn't mourning Dean—not exactly. She was mourning the marriage she'd thought she'd had. The partnership that had never existed except in her imagination. The love story that had been a performance art piece with an audience of thousands.

She was mourning the woman she'd been who could love that completely, that openly, without fear. Before she'd learned that even husbands could betray you. Before she'd discovered that love wasn't always enough to make someone choose kindness over cruelty.

The signature line waited at the bottom of the page, a black line that would officially end her fairy tale.

Fiona signed her name in careful cursive, the same signature she'd practiced as a little girl, dreaming of the day she'd sign important documents as a grown-up. Marriage certificates. House deeds. Love letters.

Not divorce papers.

But maybe that little girl's dreams had been naive too.

She gathered the papers, slipped them back into the envelope, and sealed it shut. Tomorrow she'd drive them to her lawyer's office and officially become someone who used to be married.

Tonight, she'd mourn the woman who'd believed in forever.

Fiona satat her kitchen table—the table that was now hers, in the apartment that was now hers, paid for by money that was now hers—and tried to make sense of it all.

The divorce was all but final. And while she had been living through heartbreak, Dean had been busy.

She could see his fingerprints all over her life now that she knew what to look for. The anonymous classroom donation. The improved boyfriends. The mysteriously well-funded school district. Even the grocery delivery service that had appeared without explanation.

All of it thoughtful. All of it generous. All of it confusing.

She set down her phone and stared out the window at the city beyond. Somewhere out there, twenty-three thousand people still remembered @shitfionasays. Still had those posts savedin their camera rolls, still shared screenshots of her "adorable naivety" in group chats she'd never see.

Dean had apologized to her privately, in their apartment, with his hands and mouth and desperate whispers against her skin. He'd deleted the account and posted a public apology that his followers had probably scrolled past without much thought.

Her phone buzzed with a notification from her own account—another comment on yesterday's post about healing not being linear. Someone thanking her for being honest about the messiness of moving forward.

Fiona smiled sadly at the screen.

He could fund her classroom for a decade, but it wouldn't undo the oily shame she still felt. He could orchestrate her family's happiness, but it wouldn't erase the memory of sitting at dinner tables with people who'd been laughing at her behind their wine glasses.

The humiliation had been public. Viral. Shared and screenshotted and discussed in office break rooms across the city.

But the amends? Those were all whispered in shadows, private acts of service that only she would ever know about.

Maybe that was enough for Dean. Maybe it felt like penance to him, this careful tending of her life from a distance.

But for Fiona, it felt incomplete. Like he was asking her to forgive privately what he'd damaged publicly.