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Listen to the audio: https://youtu.be/DtJNdO7qeRA

I slid the heavy brass keys across the polished marble desk.

The real estate agent, a sharply dressed woman who had spent the last four months helping me close on this property, stared at them in utter astonishment.

“Clara, the earnest money is already in escrow,” she said softly, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Aren’t you going to at least wait for Nolan to fly back from Europe to sign the termination papers? This is a massive financial hit.”

I gave a dry, hollow smile. “There’s no need to wait. He’s too busy showing his first love the Swiss Alps.”

For five years, Nolan had flown to Switzerland every winter. He claimed it was for an annual global tech summit. He would text me from the airport, complain about the jet lag, and post scenic, empty landscapes of the snow-capped Matterhorn on his Instagram.

“When are we going to take a trip like that?” I would ask, staring at the screen from our cramped city apartment. “When can we have our honeymoon?”

“Next time, Clara,” he would always reply, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “We don’t need to blow our savings on frivolous things right now. We need to be smart. Let’s just live realistically.”

I believed him. I believed every single word, right up until yesterday.

While packing up his home office for the move into our newly purchased suburban colonial, I found an old Leica digital camera shoved in the back of a desk drawer. The battery was barely clinging to life, but it turned on.

Inside were dozens of photos.

The exact same woman. The exact same angles. The exact same snowy backgrounds. Daphne standing beneath pine trees. Daphne holding a snowboard. Daphne laughing in front of the Matterhorn.

And the only trip he had ever taken with me in half a decade was a forty-minute drive to the suburbs to sign the mortgage on our new house.

Looking at the closing documents on the realtor’s desk—documents for a house I had spent four months painstakingly designing and renovating entirely on my own—I suddenly broke. A single tear tracked hotly down my cheek.

The agent carefully pushed a silver pen across the desk. “Clara… do you really want to return it?”

I wiped my cheek, my spine straightening. “Return it.”

My corporate resignation had already been approved that morning. This was my last night in this city. The Alps wouldn’t come to me, but I could go far, far away.

Chapter 1: The Souvenirs of Betrayal

“Clara, tell me you didn’t actually return the house.”

My best friend Bridget’s voice blared through the car speakers the moment I turned over the engine.

“I returned it, Bridge.”

“You just threw away a massive deposit? Without a word?”

“Yes.”

“Does Nolan even know?”

“He’s in Zermatt.”

“On his ‘business trip’?” Bridget’s voice was laced with skepticism. I didn’t answer. A heavy, suffocating silence filled the car. “Clara, have you told him yet?”

“No.”

“Clara, listen to me. Even if you guys are in a rough patch, throwing away the house—”

“I found his old camera, Bridget,” I interrupted, my voice dead and flat. “I found five years’ worth of photos. The same woman, the same mountain, the same romantic getaways. Five years straight.”

The line went dead quiet. “…Daphne?”

“Yes.”

“Are you absolutely sure it’s not a misunderstanding? Maybe she was just at the same conference?”

“Have you ever heard of a business trip where a man spends five consecutive years taking professional-grade, romantic portraits of one single woman?”

Bridget didn’t say another word.

I hung up and drove back to the apartment. Halfway there, my phone buzzed. It was a text from Nolan. A picture of a ceramic mug filled with hot chocolate, a delicate snowflake pattern dusted in cocoa powder on top.

“Snowing in Zermatt. Freezing out here. Miss you.”

I recognized that mug. Last winter, he had sent me the exact same photo, the exact same composition. When I had asked him what lodge he was at, he had casually replied, “Just some random spot off the slopes. Can’t remember the name.”

But I had seen the photos on the Leica. Daphne was sitting at that exact table, that exact hot chocolate resting in front of her, smiling radiantly at the lens. She had been wearing a wine-red cashmere scarf.

Five years. The same lodge. The same hot chocolate. The same woman. And the photos he sent me only ever featured empty landscapes and food. He never showed his face, because she was always sitting across from him.

When I walked into our apartment, I kicked off my heels. I glanced down at the shoe rack by the door. Sitting neatly next to Nolan’s expensive running shoes was a pair of pristine white designer loafers.

Size 6. I wear a size 8.

I bent down and pulled up the leather insole of the right shoe. Tucked underneath was a folded sticky note.

“Noly, make sure I change into these next time I come over. Those heels you bought me last week are killing my arches. – Daph”

Noly.

We had been together for five years, and I had never heard that nickname in my life. He hated nicknames. He strictly told me to call him Nolan.

I put the shoe back exactly where I found it and walked into the bedroom. His MacBook was still resting on his desk, asleep. I tapped the spacebar. The browser was open to a luxury travel booking site.

Aspen, Colorado. Departure February 14th. Five-star ski-in/ski-out lodge. Private hot tub. Couple’s massage.

In the reservation notes, he had typed: “Surprise birthday getaway for Daphne.”

Daphne’s birthday is February 15th.

My birthday is March 9th. Last year on March 9th, I had practically begged him to leave the office by 7:00 PM so we could have dinner. He texted me that he was locked in a corporate networking event. I sat on the couch in full makeup until 11:30 PM. His text finally came through at midnight: “Just walked in. You asleep? Happy birthday, Clara. I’ll make it up to you next time.”

Next time. The ghost of our entire relationship.

I opened the iCloud synced to his laptop. Over four thousand photos. I searched my own name.

Eleven photos.

Seven were from our first year of dating. In the last four years, he had taken exactly four pictures of me.

I clicked on a folder titled “Winter Lights.” It was filled to the brim with photos of Daphne. Daphne walking through the snow in a designer trench coat. Daphne praying playfully in front of a historic Swiss clocktower. The lighting was soft, the framing meticulous—every shot looked like an editorial spread for Vogue.

Whenever he took photos of me, the angle was always crooked, the lighting harsh. When I once asked if he could put a little effort into a nice photo of us, he had sighed in annoyance. “We aren’t models, Clara. ‘Just okay’ is fine.”

Just okay is fine. That was his life philosophy when it came to me.

My phone rang, pulling me from the screen. A FaceTime call from Nolan. I answered it.

He appeared on the screen wearing a sharp gray wool coat, walking down a carpeted hotel hallway. “Hey. Have you eaten?”

“Yes.”

“I’m flying back the day after tomorrow. Wheels down at 3 PM.”

“Okay.”

“You sound off. Your voice is flat.”

“I’m just tired from the move.”

“Right. Well, get some rest.” He was about to hang up when a bright, feminine voice echoed from behind the camera.

“Noly! The black car is downstairs!”

Nolan briefly turned his head. “Coming!”

He looked back at the screen, entirely unbothered. “Daphne is calling me. I’ve got to run.”

“Why is Daphne at your hotel in Switzerland?” I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm.

“She’s in the room next door. We grabbed dinner. She had a marketing convention in Geneva and took the train over.”

“You two just happen to coincide in the Alps every single year?”

“It’s just a coincidence, Clara. Don’t overthink it.” He let out an easy, dismissive laugh—the laugh of a man who firmly believed his fiancée was too naive to ever connect the dots. “Oh, by the way, I bought you a bunch of great souvenirs. I spent hours picking them out. See you soon.”

He hung up.

I walked into the kitchen and stared at the stainless-steel refrigerator. Five magnets were stuck to the door. Five cheap, generic Swiss cowbell magnets, bought in different years, likely at the airport kiosk.

Five years of devotion. Five $5 magnets.

Meanwhile, Daphne received luxury hot springs, custom jewelry, surprise birthday trips to Aspen, and a pet name.

My phone lit up. Nolan had texted a photo of a new magnet—a cartoonish Saint Bernard still in its plastic wrapping.

“Isn’t it cute? Daphne helped me pick it out for you.”

Even my pathetic table scraps involved her.

I typed out a message: “What did you pick out for Daphne?” My thumb hovered over the send button. I stared at the words. Then, slowly, I deleted them. I typed a single word and hit send.

“Okay.”

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