Fifty unsent invitations lay on the table. Nina examined each one, looking for a printing error she could correct. The date was right. So were the names. The paper was the color her future mother-in-law had chosen. Nothing was wrong except the relief Nina felt every time she left an envelope unsealed.
She was twenty-eight and engaged to Robert, a man she had known almost all her life. He was neither cruel nor unfaithful. He loved her in a way that assumed she wanted everything already arranged: an apartment above his parents, a job in the family company, and holidays in the same place they had visited for years.
Nina had graduated in architecture but had never done the work that truly interested her. Secretly, she had applied for a year-long program restoring old buildings. When her acceptance arrived, she opened it in the bathroom with the faucet running, as though reading it were itself an act of infidelity.
She tried talking to Robert. He said they could go there for a long weekend after the wedding. When she explained that she wanted to study for an entire year, he asked why what they had was suddenly no longer enough. It was not sudden. She had simply said something for the first time that could not fit between choosing a cake and arranging the guests.
The turning point came during a visit to their future apartment. Robert showed her the room he already called her office. Inside was a desk facing the wall because the window was occupied by a family wardrobe that must not be moved. Nina asked whether the wardrobe could go elsewhere. Three people answered at once.
That evening, she said she was canceling the wedding. She did not claim Robert was a bad man. She said marrying him while hoping he would later allow her a different life would be dishonest. The family spoke of expense and shame. Nina accepted her share of the costs and stood by her decision.
She left in September with two suitcases. During the first weeks, she missed everything familiar, even the things she had escaped. The window in her new room was hard to close, and the radiator knocked at night. No one was there to confirm every day that she had made the right choice.
For her first field assignment, she received the key to an abandoned school. She opened the door, entered with her notebook, and stopped before a large window. This time, she decided for herself where to put the desk.