The news reached me while I was making breakfast. I sat down with a piece of toast in my hand, suddenly remembering the description Emily had given of Jake years before, when she'd been trying to explain why their college relationship had failed. The same traits she'd once called unreliable had seemed romantic when they were being displayed from a distance. Living beside those traits had apparently been a different experience.
I asked Claire whether Emily was physically safe. She said Emily was staying with family while she sorted out her housing situation and that people were checking on her. I thanked her and told her I was relieved to hear it. Then I asked, gently, whether we could stop discussing the details of Emily's life unless something directly concerned me. I didn't want my recovery to become a habit of measuring another person's misfortune.
Claire understood, but word still reached me through ordinary social conversations. Emily had quit her marketing role without another job secured, and when the travel plan collapsed, she began applying for similar positions again. The local market was competitive, and leaving abruptly had made it harder to explain her recent experience. Several applications went nowhere, and former colleagues who had once offered referrals were less enthusiastic than they had been before.
I knew better than to believe that one impulsive resignation automatically ruined a career. People recovered from bad decisions all the time, and Emily had real skills she'd earned through years of work. But she was confronting a difficult combination of lost income, reduced savings, shaken confidence, and embarrassment about the choices she'd publicly celebrated. Those problems couldn't be solved by finding a new partner to manage them for her.
Her social media changed, according to friends who still followed her. The photographs of festivals slowed, replaced by vague statements about learning lessons and trusting the wrong people. I didn't look at the posts, but I could imagine the impulse behind them. When a story you've told loudly about your life stops being true, it's difficult to explain the change without feeling exposed.
Lisa, Emily's older sister, had been one of the loudest defenders of the breakup. She'd never much liked me, though she was polite enough at family dinners when things were going well. She tended to see Emily's choices as expressions of independence and my concerns as evidence that I didn't understand her. After Jake disappeared, Claire said even Lisa had begun asking serious questions about how much money Emily had spent and why she had stopped talking to certain friends.
I didn't assume that meant Lisa had suddenly become a different person. Family loyalty can contain both fierce protectiveness and uncomfortable truths, and it sounded as if she'd reached the point where support required honest advice rather than applause. If she helped Emily rebuild, I hoped she would. I didn't need my former girlfriend to be publicly condemned in order to believe leaving had been right.