I already understood that David would always define the terms of your reality. That’s what he did, that’s who he was. And I also already understood that I could never be a woman who slid into a man’s premade life and claimed it as her own. I had a world. I had a job. It had taken a lot of work to achieve those things. And no offense to downstate Illinois, but I was from the same sort of place—“Midwestern born, bred, and educated,” I used to say about myself, with pride, with self-abnegation, with a great big freaking chip on my shoulder—and there was no way that I was going back there already.