Page 55 of The Humiliated Wife

Emma's latest post appeared on screen—a simple repost of something, with her own comment at the top:This is why I love my sister.

Below it was a post from an account he didn't recognize: @missfionasays.

Dean's heart stopped.

She'd made her own account.

His finger moved without his permission, tapping on her profile. @missfionasays opened up, and there she was—her bio reading"It's not a flaw, it's a gift5th grade teacher, recovering people-pleaser, rebranding kindness as strength."

Recovering people-pleaser.

He scrolled down. Three posts total.

Dean’s eyes devoured the words like he could crawl inside them. It was agony. It was ecstasy. It felt like he was starving and this—this was the first real bite he’d had in weeks. Even secondhand, even filtered through a screen, Fiona still tasted like oxygen.

You don't have to be perfect to be proud of yourself. Trying again after something felt hard? That's brave. That counts.

The comments were small but genuine. Supportive. Real people saying real things:

"needed this today thank you""this hit me right in the heart""you're helping more people than you know"

Dean set his phone down.

While he'd been sitting in his empty apartment drowning in guilt and self-loathing, she'd been doing what she'd always done.

Creating something kind. Something healing. Something that helped other people feel less alone.

"It's not a flaw, it's a gift."

God. She was talking about herself. About the things he'd mocked, the traits he'd turned into punchlines. She was reclaiming them. Defending them. Celebrating them.

She was doing for herself what he should have been doing all along.

Dean picked up his phone again, scrolled back to her first post.

People were finding her. People were listening. People were being helped.

The way she'd always helped her students. The way she'd helped him, back when he'd been worth helping.

He thought about @shitfionasays, with its legion of followers and its cruel comment sections and its monetized mockery. Numbers he'd been so proud of. Engagement he'd thought meant success.

Thiswas what success actually looked like. This small, genuine connection. This quiet revolution of kindness.

This was Fiona, unfiltered and unperformed and completely, authentically herself.

Dean closed the app and put his phone face-down on the counter.

His cereal had gone soggy. He dumped it in the sink and stood there, hands gripping the edge of the counter, trying to breathe around the crushing weight of what he'd lost.

Not just a wife. Not just a marriage.

He'd lost the chance to be part of something beautiful. The chance to support something that mattered. The chance to be the kind of person who lifted her up instead of tearing her down.

She was going to be fine. More than fine. She was going to help people, change lives, make the world a little softer.

And he was going to spend the rest of his life knowing he could have been part of that.

He was weak.