Hearing him say it—hearing the mechanics of the emotional theft, the stolen lunches, the calculated lies that paved the way to that single, catastrophic night in the hotel room—hit Audrey like a physical blow to the sternum.
Her breath hitched. She dug her manicured nails into the wool of her coat, desperately fighting the sudden, violent surge of nausea and blinding rage that clawed up her throat.
"Thank you, Simon," Dr. Thorne said quietly. He turned his perceptive gaze to Audrey. "Audrey. What happened to your body just now, as you heard him say that?"
Audrey tightened her jaw, her analytical mind scrambling to process the data, to construct a safe, detached response. "I felt angry."
"Where?" Dr. Thorne pressed softly. "Where did you feel the anger?"
"In my chest," Audrey answered, her voice trembling slightly despite her best efforts to maintain her icy control. "It feels like... it feels like there is broken glass in my lungs."
"Because he forced you to breathe in the wreckage of a house you spent ten years building," Dr. Thorne validated, hiswords striking the exact, agonizing center of Audrey’s pain. "You are sitting across from the architect of your trauma. It is entirely reasonable that your body is reacting as if it is under attack."
Simon let out a low, ragged breath, burying his face in his hands.
"Simon, look at me," Dr. Thorne commanded gently. Simon slowly lifted his head. "You just heard your wife describe the physical agony your choices caused. What is your instinct right now? What do you want to do?"
"I want to apologize," Simon choked out, a tear finally escaping his dark eyes. "I want to fix it. I want to take the pain away from her."
"You can't," Dr. Thorne stated, a hard, necessary truth dropping into the room. "An apology right now is a bandage on a bullet wound. You cannot fix her pain today, Simon. Your job in this room is to sit in the intense discomfort of what you broke without demanding that she make you feel better about it. Can you do that?"
Simon swallowed hard, his jaw tight with the effort of holding himself together. "Yes."
Dr. Thorne nodded, turning back to Audrey. "Audrey, you agreed to these ninety days. Why? What do you need to happen in this room before the clock runs out?"
Audrey stared at the therapist, stripping away the rehearsed, pragmatic answers she had given her sister and her lawyer. In this room, the truth was the only currency.
"I need to know that it is dead," Audrey said. The absolute finality of the statement hung in the air, heavy and lethal.
Simon’s head snapped toward her, a look of profound terror crossing his exhausted features, but Dr. Thorne held up a hand, silently keeping him in his seat.
"I agreed to this because I need the data to be absolute," Audrey continued, turning her cold, unyielding gaze directly to her husband. "We had a good marriage, Simon. We had a beautiful life before you let your ego eclipse your vows. I am here because when I finally sign those papers, when I finally close the door on our family, I need to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I exhausted every avenue. I need to be able to tell my daughter that I tried. I am not here to salvage the ruins. I am here to perform the autopsy."
The silence that followed was deafening. The ticking of the wall clock sounded like a metronome tracking the last, ragged heartbeats of their history.
Dr. Thorne didn't flinch. He simply nodded, writing a single line on his legal pad. He looked over at Simon.
"Simon, your wife has just stated her terms. She is not here to hand you a second chance; she is here to verify the death of the first one," Dr. Thorne said, his voice entirely even. "Are you prepared to do the grueling work of absolute transparency, knowing that at the end of ninety days, her answer might still be no?"
Simon looked at Audrey. He looked at the fierce, unyielding strength in her posture and the absolute devastation in her eyes. The terror in his chest was absolute, but the desperate love he still held for her anchored him to the velvet sofa.
"Yes," Simon rasped. "I will give her whatever she needs."
"Then that is our work," Dr. Thorne said, closing his pad and resting his hands on his knees. "Next session, we will begin mapping the timeline of the emotional disconnect that preceded the affair. It will be painful, it will be exhausting, and neither of you will be allowed to hide."
He glanced up at the clock on the wall.
"Session one is complete. I will see you both on Thursday."
Audrey stood up immediately, sliding her arms into her trench coat. She didn't look back at Simon as she walked out of the office, the weight of the eighty-nine remaining days settling heavily across her shoulders.
Chapter 24
Audrey
The drive back to the suburbs was a suffocating, blinding blur.
Audrey gripped the leather steering wheel of her sedan until her knuckles turned white, her analytical mind entirely overwhelmed by the violent storm of her emotions. Dr. Thorne’s office had acted as a crucible, boiling down the abstract concept of Simon’s betrayal into agonizing, clinical facts. She could still hear the jagged scrape of his voice mapping out the stolen lunches, the calculated lies, and the hotel room.
