What did you do when you realized the anniversary gift your husband gave you was actually meant for his mistress?

I gave them both a night they’d never forget.

On our ten–year anniversary, Reese handed me a beautifully wrapped box across the table at a cozy little Italian place downtown. White tablecloths, tealight candles, a bottle of Cabernet breathing between us. The kind of place where the waiters say “happy anniversary” like they mean it.

“Open it,” he said, that boyish grin on his face that had suckered me in a decade earlier.

Inside was a heavy glass bottle nestled in black tissue paper. Perfume. Elegant, minimal packaging, the kind of thing you see in the glass case at a department store.

“It’s… gorgeous,” I said, because it was. I sprayed a tiny bit on my wrist and immediately felt my throat tighten.

Reese knew strong scents made me dizzy and nauseous. I’d told him that on our third date when we walked past a candle store and I nearly passed out. For ten years, he’d bought me unscented lotions, hypoallergenic detergent, flowers that didn’t choke a room.

But this perfume was expensive, classy, and in small amounts it did smell incredible. Warm vanilla and amber, a faint floral note underneath.

“I know you’re sensitive,” he said quickly when he saw me hesitate. “But the sales lady said this one was lighter, more… sophisticated. I thought you’d like it.”

He watched my face like his life depended on it.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, and leaned across the table to kiss him. “Thank you.”

He relaxed, shoulders dropping. We finished dinner, clinking glasses and reminiscing about our wedding day, the tiny church back in Ohio, the rain that cleared five minutes before the ceremony. Ten years of inside jokes and shared bills and holiday fights and makeups.

Later that night, while he was in the shower, I placed the perfume bottle on my nightstand. The amber liquid caught the bathroom light under the door. I was still smiling when his phone lit up on his side of the bed.

A text from a woman named Maxine.

Oh, Reese, you’re so naughty, followed by the shy monkey emoji.

Excuse me, what?

I stared at the screen, my heart thudding. My first instinct was to look away. My second was to pick up the phone.

I did the second.

His passcode was our wedding date. Of course it was.

Messages flooded the screen. My eyes went straight to the line she was responding to.

Just twenty minutes earlier, while I’d been washing dishes and humming along to some playlist, Reese had texted:

I got my wife your perfume so I can smell you around the house.

I read it three times, hoping I was misreading. The words didn’t change. They sat there, clear and casual, like it was nothing.

My stomach turned. I scrolled up.

There were flirty texts and photos I’d never received in ten years of marriage. Maxine in a red dress I knew Reese would love. Maxine in a bikini by some hotel pool. Maxine in a bubble bath, only her knees and shoulders visible, but the implication obvious.

And mixed in with the selfies were messages where they talked about me.

She’s so easy to manipulate, Reese had typed.

Don’t say that, she’d replied, followed by a laughing emoji. But it doesn’t seem hard.

You have no idea, he wrote back. I want to be with you so bad, but the thrill of not getting caught is too exciting to just leave her.

My heart didn’t just hurt. I felt it physically crack, like something inside my chest had split down the middle.

I glanced at the perfume bottle on the nightstand, the glass still slick from my fingers earlier. Tears blurred my vision as I turned the bottle in my hand, reading the label.

Eau de parfum.

Alcohol denat.

I remembered a random fact from some science class I’d barely passed: alcohol was flammable.

If they wanted a thrill, they were going to get one.

Because perfume was flammable.

The next morning, I dabbed a tiny bit of the perfume on my wrists and neck before Reese woke up. Just a whisper of scent, enough to tickle the air.

When he walked into the kitchen in his work shirt and tie, his whole face lit up.

“You’re actually wearing it,” he said. He stepped in close, buried his face against my neck, inhaled deeply. “God, I love how it smells.”

He kissed my cheek like he was the best husband in America.

He had no idea.

I didn’t confront him. Not yet. Revenge, if it was going to be worth anything, needed patience.

So I drove him crazy instead.

I started casually mentioning all the places I knew he’d taken Maxine. I’d gone through months of texts; their affair was practically a Yelp guide.

Have you seen this pasta place? I asked one night while scrolling on my phone as we sat on the couch. Their carbonara looks amazing.

A photo of a dimly lit restaurant with exposed brick and candles. A place where he’d told Maxine she looked beautiful in that red dress.

Reese’s coffee dripped out of his mouth slightly.

“Never heard of it,” he said too quickly.

“Huh,” I murmured. “It’s right by your office. I figured you’d know it.”

He pulled at his collar and pretended to adjust the volume on the TV.

Another day, I said, “I was thinking of having lunch at Julio’s Cafe after work. Everyone at the office raves about it.”

His fork froze halfway to his mouth.

“Julio’s?” he repeated.

“Yeah, you know it?”

“N-no,” he said. “Never been.”

Liar.

Each mention landed like a small stone dropped into a still pond. I watched the ripples spread. The more I “accidentally” brought up Maxine’s places, the more jittery he became.

A week later, I handed him a glossy pamphlet across the kitchen counter while he drank his morning coffee.

“I was thinking of getting my nails done at this salon downtown,” I said. “What do you think?”

The logo on the front was unmistakable. Maxine’s workplace. I knew because she’d sent him mirror selfies from the reception desk, complaining about difficult clients and praising herself for perfect manicures.

Reese stared at the pamphlet, his knuckles whitening around the coffee mug. Sweat beaded at his hairline.

“You’ve… never liked the way they do nails,” he said slowly. “Would you really go there?”

“Maybe one day,” I said with a little shrug. “But not today.”

He exhaled like he’d been holding his breath underwater.

The really fun part came at his parents’ house.

We were at Sunday dinner, sitting around Geneva’s oak table in the same suburban Michigan living room where Reese had grown up. The air smelled like pot roast and old carpet cleaner. I wore the perfume he’d given me, just enough where he’d catch it every time I moved.

Geneva launched into her favorite topic.

“Ten years married,” she said, handing me the mashed potatoes. “When are you two going to give me grandbabies?”

Reese groaned. “Mom.”

I smiled sweetly and turned to him.

“You know,” I said, “if we ever have a daughter, I’ve always loved the name Maxine.”

The soda nearly slipped from his hand. He coughed, eyes watering, and dabbed at his mouth with his napkin.

“I’d… prefer other names,” he stammered.

“Oh, I think Maxine is lovely,” Geneva said. “What made you think of it?” She turned to me, genuinely curious.

Reese’s eyes were wide, locked on my face, searching for any sign that I knew.

I kept my expression airy.

“It’s a name that’s very hard to forget,” I said. “Just so lovely and unique.”

His fork scraped his plate. His knee bounced under the table. He didn’t touch his dinner.

After that night, Reese’s paranoia cranked up to eleven. He watched me constantly. If I so much as mentioned a name that started with M, his head snapped up.

He started smoking, too.

He’d never been a smoker. He used to complain about people who lit up outside bars. But Maxine’s Instagram was full of pictures of her with slim white cigarettes between her fingers, ashes dangling dramatically as she posed in front of murals and downtown alleyways.

One evening I stepped out on our balcony and found him with one lit between his fingers, the ember glowing orange in the dusk.

“Since when do you smoke?” I asked.

“It’s just to take the edge off,” he said. “Work’s been insane.”

He flicked ash over the railing, the smell of tobacco mixing with the faint sweetness of my perfume.

His texts to Maxine showed exactly how on edge he was.

I thought this would make me stop, he typed.

She’s acting weird, she replied. Do you think she knows?

She doesn’t know, he wrote back. She can’t.

I did. I knew every disgusting detail.

I thought maybe making him miserable would be enough. That he’d end it with her, or at least that I’d wake up one morning and not care anymore.

I was wrong.

Reese announced he had a work trip coming up. A conference in another city, three hours away.

The date? Maxine’s birthday.

“This was the only week they could do it,” he said, fiddling with his tie. “Mandatory. Clients and everything.”

“Of course,” I said. “You should go. Network.”

That night, after he fell asleep on the couch, I did my own networking—with Google.

It didn’t take long to find the exact hotel they were staying at. The confirmation email to Maxine, which he’d helpfully forwarded to his personal account “just in case,” was right there in his inbox.

A midrange chain off the highway. Nothing fancy. One thing caught my eye in the photos.

Smoking rooms available.

I looked over at the perfume bottle on my nightstand.

Instead of confronting him the night before his trip, I helped him pack.

I folded his shirts and pants neatly, stacked them in the suitcase like the perfect wife I used to be. I packed his socks, his boxers, his favorite navy blazer.

Then, when he went back to the bathroom to double-check his toiletries, I took the perfume bottle out of my drawer.

I sprayed it on everything.

On his shirts, inside and out. On his jacket. On his ties. On the lining of his suitcase. I misted until the air shimmered.

It smelled like a department store exploded in our bedroom.

Reese walked back in and laughed.

“Jesus, honey,” he said. “You’ve practically marinated my wardrobe.”

I smiled and stepped forward to straighten his collar.

“It’s so you can smell me even when you’re away,” I said.

His eyes softened.

“God, I love you,” he said.

I watched him carry the suitcase down the stairs and out to his car. Watched his taillights fade down our quiet street.

That was the last time I saw him looking like himself.

At two in the morning, my phone rang.

I fumbled for it in the dark.

“Hello?”

“Is this Reese’s wife?” a woman’s voice asked. “This is a nurse from Halter General Hospital. Your husband’s been in an accident.”

My heart kicked into a sprint.

I pulled myself together in seconds.

“What happened?” I asked, letting my voice crack.

“There was a fire in his hotel room,” she said. “We need you to come as soon as possible.”

I threw on jeans and a sweatshirt, grabbed my keys, and drove through the empty streets with my hazard lights on the whole way.

At the hospital, I rushed through the sliding doors, breathless and wide-eyed.

“Where is he? Where’s my Reese?” I begged the nurse at the desk.

They led me down a hallway that smelled like antiseptic and burnt fabric. A doctor and a police officer waited outside a room.

“Mrs. Larson?” the doctor asked.

I nodded, gripping my arms.

“I’m Dr. Patel,” he said. “Your husband has second-degree burns over roughly thirty percent of his body. Mostly his torso and arms. He’s stable for now.”

“How did this happen?” I asked, my voice shaking.

The officer, a man with tired eyes and a badge that read GILES, stepped forward.

“There was a fire in the room,” he said. “Apparently, a cigarette your husband was smoking set his clothes on fire. His shirt was saturated with a flammable perfume.”

I gasped.

“How could that even happen?” I whispered.

“We’re still investigating,” he said. “But we did find a matching perfume bottle in the woman’s makeup bag.” His lips pressed into a thin line. “I’m sorry to say this, but it appears your husband was having an affair. We suspect she may have planned this, but she was caught in the fire as well.”

He said “the woman” like Maxine was a stranger.

I made my face crumble, my knees wobble.

“I… I had no idea,” I managed.

They let me in to see him.

Reese lay in the bed, arms wrapped in thick white bandages, chest covered in a gauze vest. His face was blotchy but mostly untouched. He looked smaller somehow, fragile in a way I’d never seen.

His eyes fluttered open when he heard me.

“Lauren?” he rasped.

I moved to his bedside and took his unbandaged hand.

“I’m here,” I said softly.

His eyes filled with tears. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

I didn’t answer. I reached into my purse and pulled out the perfume bottle I’d tucked inside before leaving the house.

I uncapped it and began spraying it in small circles around his bed.

“Honey, what—” he started, panic flickering in his eyes.

“So,” I said in a cheerful voice. “About Maxine.”

His pupils blew wide. His mouth opened but no sound came out.

I kept spraying. The scent thickened in the air.

“You like this smell, right?” I asked quietly, leaning close to his ear. “You liked it enough to put it all over your clothes. To put it all over her.”

His breath came faster. The bandages on his arms twitched as he tried to move them, but the pain stopped him. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the cool room.

I lowered my mouth to his ear.

“We really need to have a long talk about your girlfriend,” I whispered. “And that hotel room.”

The door burst open.

“Ma’am!” a doctor snapped. “You need to stop that immediately.”

He strode over, grabbed the perfume bottle from my hand, and handed it to a nurse.

“What were you thinking?” he demanded. “He’s on oxygen. You can’t spray aerosols in here.”

I snapped into my devastated-wife performance like flipping a switch.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” I gasped. “I just thought… it’s from home. I thought the smell would comfort him. I didn’t know.”

The nurse took my arm gently.

“Let’s step out,” she said.

I let her guide me into the hallway, my eyes wide and brimming.

The head nurse introduced herself as Anoria Giles—Detective Giles’ wife, it turned out—and took me into a small consultation room. She had kind eyes, the kind that see more than they say.

She explained that Reese had second-degree burns covering a third of his body. Most of the damage was on his arms and torso where his shirt had gone up like a torch.

“The pain is intense,” she said softly. “He’ll need weeks of treatment. Possibly skin grafts.”

“And the woman?” I asked.

“Her burns are more severe,” Anoria said. “She tried to put out the flames with her hands.”

Her voice stayed clinical, but I heard the judgment underneath.

“She’ll need multiple surgeries,” she added. “The scarring will be permanent.”

I covered my face with my hands like I was crying. Some of the tears were real. Not for Reese or Maxine, but because I could feel the weight of what I’d set in motion settling over me like wet cement.

I spent hours in the waiting room after that, sitting in those hard plastic chairs, playing the part. I let my shoulders droop. Kept my hands folded in my lap. Stared at the floor like I was in shock.

Reese’s family trickled in as the news spread.

His younger brother Caleb arrived first, followed by cousins I barely knew. Finally, Geneva rushed in, mascara already smeared.

She wrapped me in a hug.

“My poor baby,” she sobbed into my shoulder. “My poor son. How could this happen?”

I rubbed her back and murmured soothing sounds while thinking about the texts where her “poor baby” called me easy to manipulate.

She pulled back and stared into my face, searching.

“He’ll be okay,” I said, letting my lip tremble. “He has to be.”

Late that night, a detective approached me in the waiting room. Detective Marius Giles, the same officer who’d spoken to me earlier.

“Mrs. Larson,” he said. “Do you have a minute?”

He led me to a quieter corner, pulled out a small notebook, and asked me to walk him through Reese’s trip.

I explained about the conference, how I’d helped him pack, folding his clothes carefully because I wanted him to look professional.

“Did you put any perfume on his clothes?” he asked.

I let confusion cross my face.

“Maybe a little,” I said. “Just so he could smell me while he was away. I didn’t know that was dangerous.”

“Were you aware perfume can be flammable?” he asked.

I shook my head, wide-eyed.

“I had no idea,” I lied. “It’s just… perfume.”

He watched me for a long moment. His eyes were the kind that missed nothing.

“Where did you get the bottle?” he asked.

“Reese gave it to me,” I said. “For our anniversary.”

He wrote that down, then asked what I knew about Maxine.

I made my face go slack with confusion.

“Maxine?” I repeated.

“The woman in the room with him,” he said. “Do you know her?”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t even know she existed until you told me.”

It wasn’t the whole truth, but it wasn’t a total lie either. I hadn’t known she existed until the night of our anniversary.

He scribbled in his notebook, thanked me for my time, and said they might have more questions later.

I left the hospital at three in the morning when they said Reese was stable and sleeping. The drive home felt like moving through fog.

At my house, I went straight to the kitchen trash can and dug through coffee grounds and food scraps until I found the empty perfume box.

It was damp, but the tiny print on the back was still legible.

Warning: flammable. Keep away from heat, sparks, open flame.

My heart pounded as I read it.

Evidence.

I carried the box to the fireplace, struck a match, and watched the cardboard curl and blacken. The warning labels disappeared in a curl of smoke.

I stirred the ashes until they were unrecognizable, washed my hands three times, scrubbing hard like I could erase what I’d done.

At six a.m., I called my mom.

Rita picked up on the second ring.

“Lauren?” she said, instantly alert. “What’s wrong?”

“Can you come?” I asked. “Please?”

She made the three-hour drive in just over two and arrived at my door with coffee and an overnight bag. The second I opened the door, she wrapped me in her arms.

I broke.

For the first time since seeing that text from Maxine, I let myself cry for real. Loud, ugly sobs that shook my whole body.

Rita held me, stroking my hair the way she did when I was little and scraped my knee.

When I finally calmed down, we moved to the couch. She kept her arm around me.

“Tell me everything,” she said.

So I did. Or most of it.

I told her about the anniversary perfume and the text message. I showed her the screenshots I’d taken of Reese and Maxine mocking me. The jobs, the restaurants, the nail salon, the hotel.

Her expression went from sympathy to cold fury as she read.

“I can’t believe he did this,” she said finally. “After ten years.”

She paced across my living room, hands clenched.

“I trusted that man with my daughter,” she muttered. “I will never forgive him for this.”

She asked how long the affair had been going on.

“Eight months,” I said. “At least.”

She stopped pacing and looked at me differently, like she was trying to see inside my head.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

I opened my mouth to say yes.

“I don’t know,” I said instead.

Rita drove me back to the hospital that afternoon. We rode the elevator up to the burn unit together. The smell of antiseptic and something faintly charred hit me as soon as the doors opened.

Caleb was there, leaning against the wall by the nurse’s station. He looked like a slightly taller, less damaged version of Reese.

He hugged me awkwardly.

“He told me,” Caleb said quietly when Rita went to get coffee. “About the affair.”

My heart stuttered.

“He’s an idiot,” Caleb went on. “If you leave him, I wouldn’t blame you.”

I let tears gather in my eyes.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I said. That part was honest.

A woman in a dark blazer approached us then, a tablet in hand and a badge clipped to her belt.

“I’m Fire Marshal Sarah Marrow,” she said. “Mrs. Larson, do you have a moment?”

Detective Giles joined her.

They led me into a small conference room and showed me photos on the tablet. Charred carpet. A burnt shirt. The melted remains of a perfume bottle identical to mine in a clear evidence bag.

They asked more questions. About warning labels. About flammable products. About whether I’d ever researched perfume ingredients.

I lied as little as I could.

I said I threw away boxes without reading them. That science had never been my thing. That I was just a wife who wanted her husband to smell like home.

Sarah’s eyes narrowed slightly, but she didn’t push further—not then.

The next few weeks blurred into a cycle of hospital visits, questioning, and pretending.

Geneva’s grief curdled into suspicion. One afternoon in the hospital cafeteria, she grabbed my arm and hissed, “You knew about her, didn’t you? Before the fire.”

I pulled my arm free.

“I found out the night of our anniversary,” I said. “The hospital told me the rest.”

She stared at me for a long moment, then walked away.

Detectives pulled Reese’s phone records. Then mine. They saw my “fun little campaign” of mentioning Maxine’s name, her salon, her favorite restaurants.

They got a warrant for our home computer. They saw my search history.

Flammable perfume.

Cigarette ignition temperature.

Hotel fire codes.

My stomach dropped when my lawyer, a sharp woman named Artemia Hanley, laid the printouts on her desk.

“The prosecutor is looking at attempted murder,” she said bluntly. “For both Reese and Maxine.”

“I didn’t…” I started, then stopped. I had done everything except strike the match.

“Tell me the truth,” Artemia said. “All of it. Attorney–client privilege means it stays in this room.”

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. My hands shook in my lap.

“I knew the perfume was flammable,” I admitted. “I’d read the label. I looked it up. I knew he was smoking. I wanted… I wanted something bad to happen. I wanted him to be scared. I wanted her to hurt.”

“Did you intend to set them on fire?” she asked.

“No,” I said, and it was the only pure truth I had. “I didn’t have a specific picture in my head. I just knew it was dangerous and I didn’t care.”

She exhaled.

“Okay,” she said. “That’s recklessness, not premeditated murder. We can work with recklessness.”

The prosecutor offered a deal.

If I pleaded guilty to reckless endangerment, they’d drop the attempted murder charge. I’d get probation, community service, and have to pay restitution to Maxine for her medical bills. No jail time.

If I refused, they’d go to trial and throw everything at me.

I sat in my tiny living room with Rita on the couch, Artemia across from us, the offer on the coffee table between us.

“Take it,” Rita said quietly. “You can’t risk prison.”

I looked at my mother, the woman who’d taught me to stand up for myself, to leave men who treated me badly, to be better than the people who hurt me.

“I’m a criminal,” I said.

“You made a criminal choice,” she corrected softly. “That’s not all you are. But you have to own it.”

I signed.

In court, the judge read the terms, his voice echoing off the wood-paneled walls.

Two years probation.

Five hundred hours of community service.

Seventy thousand dollars in restitution to Maxine.

No jail time.

I stood there in a simple navy dress, hands clasped, and said, “Guilty, Your Honor,” while my mother watched from the bench behind me.

The divorce finalized a few weeks later. Reese kept the house and most of the assets. My half of our savings went straight into an account earmarked for Maxine’s medical bills.

I walked away with my car, a handful of furniture, and a criminal record.

Rita helped me move into a small one–bedroom across town. Old hardwood floors, thin walls, a view of a parking lot. The kind of place you start over in because you have no other choice.

My community service placement was almost poetic.

The judge assigned me to a burn support center downtown.

“You’ll answer phones, file paperwork, drive patients to appointments,” the coordinator explained on my first day. She’d read my file. I could see it in her eyes.

The first time I sat in on a support group, I wanted to crawl out of my skin.

A woman named Sarah talked about her third skin graft surgery, how the healing process felt like being flayed alive.

A man described the way strangers stared at his scars when he bought groceries.

Another woman cried as she talked about her kids being scared to hug her because they didn’t want to hurt her.

Every story hit like a punch.

This is what you did, a voice inside me said. This is what burns do. This is what pain really looks like.

Through Caleb’s polite, infrequent texts, I learned that Reese was doing physical therapy three times a week. The nerve damage in his hands made it hard for him to grip things. He couldn’t button shirts easily. Couldn’t type for long without pain.

Maxine had moved back to her hometown to live with her parents. She’d lost her job at the salon. Customers didn’t want a nail tech whose scars made them uncomfortable. She was piecing together part-time work while going through more surgeries.

My restitution checks went to her hospital in slow, steady payments. Every month, I watched my bank account drain a little more and thought, You did this. You pay for this.

Six months after the fire, I ran into Reese at a medical supply store.

I was picking up bandages for one of the center’s clients. He was standing in the aisle, staring at shelves of creams and gauze.

Up close, I could see the shiny, mottled patches of scar tissue peeking above his collar. His right hand didn’t close all the way around the bottle he held.

“Hey,” he said quietly when he saw me.

“Hey,” I replied.

We stood there like strangers who’d just realized they’d once shared a bed.

“How are you?” I asked.

He gave a humorless little laugh.

“Better,” he said. “Physically. Mentally? That’s… a work in progress.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. The words came out before I could stop them. “For what I did. For all of it.”

He swallowed.

“I’m sorry too,” he said. “For what I did before that. For the affair. For the texts. For making jokes about you.”

We both looked down at our hands.

“I should have just left,” he said. “Or been honest and asked for a divorce. I wanted the thrill instead.”

“I should have just left,” I echoed. “The night I saw those messages. I should have packed a bag and gone to my mom’s.”

We were quiet for a moment.

“We wrecked each other,” he said finally. “In different ways.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We did.”

There was nothing else to say after that. We nodded at each other like distant acquaintances and walked away.

In therapy, my counselor introduced a term I’d never heard before: moral injury.

“It’s what happens,” she said, “when you do something that violates your own core values. It’s not just guilt. It’s grief for the person you thought you were.”

I started journaling, filling pages with ugly, honest sentences.

I wanted him to hurt.

I didn’t think about what fire really does.

I liked watching him squirm.

I didn’t care if they got scared.

Writing it down didn’t excuse the choices, but it made them real in a way denial never could.

Rita came with me to a few sessions. We sat side by side on a small couch, talking about the girl she’d raised, the woman I’d become, and whether those two people could ever be the same again.

“You’re not a monster,” she said one afternoon when I finally confessed every detail. “But you did something monstrous. That’s a difference that matters. Monsters don’t feel this bad.”

One year after the fire, I walked into the burn center for my last official community service shift.

They offered me a job.

“Part-time to start,” the coordinator said. “You’re good with the patients. You listen. You don’t flinch.”

I thought about turning it down, about getting as far away from scars and grafts and the smell of ointment as I could.

Instead, I said yes.

My probation ended a few months later. The restitution payments would follow me for years, a bill I’d keep paying until the damage I’d done was at least financially covered.

I’d never get back the version of myself that existed before that perfume bottle landed in my hands. The woman who believed she’d take the high road when someone hurt her.

But every morning now, I wake up in my little apartment, make coffee, and drive to a building full of people whose lives were changed forever by fire.

I help them fill out forms. I drive them to appointments. I hold their hands when a dressing change hurts so much they want to scream.

I can’t undo what I did to Reese and Maxine. I can’t un-smell that perfume or un-spray those clothes.

What I can do, every single day, is choose not to be the woman who thought revenge would make her feel whole.

Reese gave me perfume meant for his mistress.

I gave him and his mistress scars they’ll carry for the rest of their lives.

And now, I live with mine.