That night, I didn’t go back to the house.

Not because I didn’t have a place to sleep.

But because, for the first time in years, I finally understood that what I had been calling “home” was nothing more than a beautifully decorated illusion.

I stayed at the office.

The lights were off, the building nearly empty, and outside the glass walls, Los Angeles shimmered like it always did—alive, glowing, indifferent. Cars moved. People laughed somewhere far below. Life went on.