Chapter 3 - The Empty Nest
The flight to Portland was long, quiet, and dreamless. I pressed my forehead against the cold airplane window, watching the patchwork quilt of American farmlands give way to the dark, majestic peaks of the Cascade Mountains as we began our descent.
By the time I reached Newport, Oregon, the sun was sinking low over the Pacific Ocean, casting long, fiery ribbons of orange and purple across the gray swells.
My college roommate, Sarah, had kept her promise. The apartment above Harbor Light Books was small, warm, and smelled wonderfully of old paper, salt spray, and roasted coffee beans. A modest bed sat by a window overlooking the fishing docks, where local trawlers bobbed gently against their moorings in the evening tide.
I spent my first three days in a state of suspended animation. I unpacked my single suitcase, hung my clothes in the pine wardrobe, and walked along the windy pebble beaches wrapped in a heavy wool coat, listening to the rhythmic crash of the surf.
For the first time in seven years, nobody called me to ask where their dry cleaning was. Nobody asked me to host a dinner party for regional shipping executives. Nobody sighed heavily when I asked for a weekend of peace.
The quiet was terrifying at first. Then, it became addictive.
On the fourth morning, I woke up feeling a strange, vibrant surge of energy. I walked down the creaking wooden stairs to the bookstore below, where Sarah was shelving new arrivals on the biography aisle.
“Morning, mama,” Sarah smiled, handing me a steaming mug of peppermint tea. “How’s the little tenant holding up?”
“Growing,” I smiled, resting my hand over my slightly rounded stomach. At seventeen weeks, the changes were subtle, but I could feel a quiet, powerful shift inside my body—a life that belonged entirely to me, untainted by the toxic wreckage of my marriage.
“Good,” Sarah said fiercely. “Because you deserve to breathe, Amy. You’ve spent years shrinking yourself to fit inside that corporate monster’s shadow.”
May you like
Before I could answer, the bell above the bookstore door chimed merrily, announcing the morning’s first customer.
Little did I know, three thousand miles away in Manhattan, the empire Daniel Harrison had spent a decade building was beginning to implode under the weight of his own blindness.
