The last time she saw Diane was in the parking lot outside the closing attorney’s office.
Diane looked different — not diminished exactly, but as though some layer of absolute certainty had been quietly removed.
She paused beside Megan as they walked toward their separate cars.
“Did you know it would end this way?” she asked. Her voice held no sharpness this time.
Megan considered the question honestly.
“No,” she said. “I only knew I was not going to allow all of you to write me out of a house I paid for.”
Diane nodded once — the slow, quiet nod of someone receiving information that has arrived a little too late to be useful.
Then she walked to Trevor’s car, and they drove away.
Megan stood in the parking lot for a moment longer, keys in hand, the afternoon light falling evenly across the asphalt.
What she felt was not triumph.
