In front of everyone, they gave the family heirloom to his cousin, hoping to watch me fall apart. I smiled instead. In six years of marriage, my husband Beau’s family had never truly accepted me. At my own welcome dinner, my mother-in-law, Caroline, placed the locket that symbolized the lady of the house around the neck of Daisy-Mae, Beau’s cloying cousin, and announced that she was the true soul of the family. My husband, a man who’d made a lifetime habit of avoiding conflict, simply stood silently to the side. Everyone was waiting for me to make a scene. What they didn’t know was that I was smiling because my exit strategy could finally begin. I made an elegant departure—not to our bedroom, but to the airport. By the time Beau received the divorce papers from my lawyer the next day, I was already on a flight to Venice. Goodbye, Mr. Beauregard. You and your family were now just a failed project on my otherwise flawless resume, a structure I had just......
