Lying directly on top of the photograph was a tangle of glittering gold, sapphires, and emeralds. The anniversary bracelet. It was broken, the delicate chain snapped violently in half.
The impact hit Simon with the force of a freight train. The air left his lungs in a sharp, agonizing rush. The floor seemed to drop out from beneath him, leaving him entirely unmoored in his own kitchen.
He was too late.
"Audrey, please," Simon gasped, his legs giving out. He stumbled forward, catching himself on the edge of the island. The marble was freezing under his palms. "I was coming home to tell you. I swear to God, I was driving home right now to tell you everything."
"Stop talking," Audrey said. Her voice didn't rise above a conversational volume, but it cut through the room like a surgical scalpel. "If you say another word to me, Simon, I will call the police and have you removed from my property."
Simon froze. The absolute, undeniable finality in her tone paralyzed him.
"I got the email at 10:15 this morning," Audrey stated, her voice dead and flat. She looked down at the photo of him sleeping in Emily's bed, then back up to his eyes. "You have been entirely deleted from my life. Your bags are packed. My lawyer will contact you on Monday. I will drop Lily off at your mother's on Sunday so you can explain to your daughter why you destroyed her family."
"No," Simon choked out, the tears finally breaking, hot and blinding, spilling down his cheeks. He fell to his knees on the hardwood floor, right next to the garbage bag containing his clothes. He couldn't breathe. His entire world was disintegrating in real-time. "Audrey, please. Don't do this. I love you. Please, I'll do anything. I'll quit the firm today. I'll do anything."
Audrey looked down at him, a weeping, broken man kneeling on the floor of the kitchen she had designed.
"Take your garbage, Simon," she said softly, the ultimate, devastating insult from a woman of science. "And get out of my house."
She turned around and walked out of the kitchen, her heels clicking sharply against the hardwood. Simon heard theheavy door of her home office shut down the hall, followed by the loud, echoing click of the deadbolt.
Simon was left entirely alone on the kitchen floor, surrounded by plastic bags, staring up at a broken bracelet and a photograph of the moment he lost everything.
Chapter 7
Simon
The click of the deadbolt echoed through the quiet house, sounding like a gunshot.
Simon remained on his knees on the cold hardwood floor for a long time. The house around him felt entirely alien. The hum of the refrigerator, the afternoon sunlight slanting across the marble island, the faint scent of Audrey’s jasmine hand soap—it was all exactly the same, yet it belonged to a life he was no longer a part of.
He slowly pushed himself up. His legs felt weak, his joints aching as if he had just been in a physical wreck. He looked at the kitchen island. The broken anniversary bracelet and the printed photograph were still lying there, a monument to his failure.
He didn't touch them. He didn't deserve to.
Instead, Simon turned to the six black garbage bags leaning against the custom cabinets. He grabbed the plastic drawstrings of the first two. They were heavy, filled haphazardly with his suits, shoes, and casual clothes.
Dragging them out of the kitchen felt like dragging a corpse. The thick plastic scraped loudly against the pristinehardwood floors—a harsh, ugly sound that made his stomach churn. He hauled them down the hallway, through the foyer, and out the front door.
The late afternoon air was crisp and painfully normal. Across the street, Mrs. Williams was watering her hydrangeas. A dog barked a few houses down. Simon ignored the potential audience, his face burning with a mix of profound humiliation and absolute self-loathing.
He popped the trunk of his sedan and threw the bags inside. He walked back into the house two more times, repeating the grueling, pathetic process. On the final trip, he grabbed his toothbrush and a stray charger from the entryway table, leaving his house keys sitting alone on the console.
He pulled the front door shut. It locked automatically behind him.
Simon walked down the driveway, got into the driver’s seat of his car, and slammed the door. The silence of the insulated cabin wrapped around him, thick and suffocating.
He gripped the steering wheel, his chest heaving as he fought a second wave of violent, choking tears. He wanted to scream. He wanted to drive his car into a brick wall. But beneath the suffocating grief, a different emotion was rapidly taking shape, burning through the fog of panic like acid.
Rage.
It was directed entirely at himself, but it required an immediate outlet. He grabbed his phone from his pocket, his thumb swiping aggressively across the screen. He didn't even look at his contacts. He just hit the recent call log and pressed David’s name.
The phone connected to the car’s Bluetooth system, ringing loudly through the speakers.
"Simon!" David answered on the second ring, his voice booming and jovial. "Just the man I wanted to talk to. The caterer for the Miller account is pushing back on the—"
"I'm quitting, David," Simon interrupted, his voice a harsh, unrecognizable rasp.
