Evan stood beside her and thought about everything the previous months had cost — the money, yes, but more than that, the weeks his wife had spent absorbing treatment that no person should have to absorb quietly in their own home.
He thought about the woman who had been beside him when there was nothing to take.
The one who had stayed not because of what he had built but because of who he was before any of it existed.
Success, he had learned, has a way of attracting people who were never really there for you.
What it cannot buy — what no amount of financial correction or account restructuring can manufacture — is the specific loyalty of someone who chose you before you gave them any material reason to.
Meredith had been that person for him.
He had left her in the wrong hands.
He would not make that mistake again.
