Chapter 4: The Retreat to the Catskills
Diana did not return to the five-million-dollar penthouse on Upper East Side.
She had packed her personal belongings three days earlier into the trunk of her modest dark sedan. She drove north on the Taconic Parkway, leaving the glittering towers and poisonous whispers of Manhattan far behind.
Three hours later, she arrived in the quiet mountain town of Phoenicia, nestled deep in the Catskill Mountains.
There, on a five-acre parcel of birch trees and mountain laurel, sat an old cedar-shingled farmhouse that had belonged to her maternal grandfather: *The Willowbrook Homestead.*
The house smelled of seasoned pine, dried lavender, and old paper.
Diana built a fire in the fieldstone hearth, wrapped herself in a thick wool blanket, and sat on the braided rug, watching the orange flames lick the birch logs.
For five years, she had lived inside a pressure cooker of high-society expectations, managing balance sheets for people who regarded honesty as a flaw and empathy as a weakness. She had endured the subtle insults at dinner parties, the condescending glances from her mother-in-law, and the agonizing realization that her husband had replaced love with balance-sheet vanity.
A single tear rolled down her cheek, dropping into the wool blanket.
It was not a tear of regret. It was the release of five years of held breath.
She looked around the simple, sun-faded room, listened to the wind whisper through the mountain pines, and felt an overwhelming, grounding wave of peace.
May you like
She was free.
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