I take the coastal highway instead of the interstate. I look out the window more often than I should. I try to appreciate each moment that I have. At one point, a song comes on the radio that I haven’t heard in years, and for four minutes, I let myself forget who I am and what I’m doing. I’m just me, dancing in a car heading north on Pacific Coast Highway and it’s not so bad. It’s not so bad at all.

When I pull into my driveway, my apartment looks bigger and higher up than I remember. I get the mail and search through it for the marriage certificate. It’s not there. However, in the mail is a check from Citibank addressed to me. I go up the steps and I let myself in the house.

It smells familiar. It’s a scent I didn’t even know I missed until I smell it. Everything is where I left it. It was frozen in time while I was in Orange County. I breathe in deeply and I don’t smell Ben here. I just smell myself.

I sit down on my couch and organize the rest of the mail. I clean up some old dishes. I make my bed. I clean out the refrigerator and then take out the trash. As I come back in, I stop and look at the envelope from Citibank. It feels petty to be thinking about how much money I’ve just inherited, but I have to open the envelope at some point. So here we go.

Fourteen thousand, two hundred sixteen dollars and forty-eight cents, paid to the order of Elsie Porter. Huh. I don’t know when I stopped considering myself Elsie Porter Ross, but it seems to have been some time ago.

Here I am, six months after I got married: husbandless and fourteen thousand dollars richer.