“You’re 50, Elena, not 20. Go in alone and cover yourself up.”
My husband said those words outside the restaurant on my 50th birthday.
Then he refused to walk inside with me.
I stood there beneath the restaurant’s warm outdoor lights, one hand resting nervously against the emerald-green fabric of my dress, wondering how something I had been so excited about only hours earlier had suddenly become something I was supposed to be ashamed of.
The dress wasn’t revealing.
It fell modestly below my knees. It was fitted, elegant, and the exact shade of green I had fallen in love with when I saw it in the store three weeks earlier.
For once, I hadn’t bought something because it was practical.
I hadn’t checked whether it was on sale.
I hadn’t asked whether Damon would approve.
I bought it because I looked in the mirror and liked what I saw.
That mattered to me.
It was my 50th birthday.
Twenty-five years of marriage.
Three children.
More than two decades of raising Lily, Noah, and Jake, while constantly putting everyone else’s needs before my own.
For years, I had been the person who remembered everyone’s appointments, packed lunches, attended school events, stayed awake when one of the children was sick, and showed up when someone needed me.
