Chapter thirty-eight
Arthur
Three days in Europe should feel like relief. Different air. Different time zone. A schedule packed tight enough that there's no room for reflection. That has always been the point of travel—movement as insulation.
It doesn't work.
The hotel room is immaculate and anonymous, the kind of place designed to keep you from forming attachments. I stand at the window overlooking a city I don't care about and realize that for the first time in years, my control doesn't travel with me.
Henry's voice follows me everywhere. Not complaining. Not crying. Just matter-of-fact.
If you love her, stop acting like you don't.
I tell myself I'll deal with that later.
Later never comes.
I draft a revised schedule for Henry—additional tutoring blocks, a new extracurricular, time accounted for down to the quarter hour.
It looks perfect.
It looks nothing like him laughing in the kitchen with Lindsay.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and close my eyes.
The distance I thought would clarify everything has only made the fracture lines more visible.
***
My team insists on a virtual meeting with me. Lawyers. PR consultants. Advisors who have never once steered me wrong—because they understand one thing very well: reputation is an asset, and assets must be protected.
They lay it out cleanly. Annulment. Swift. Quiet. Frame the marriage as a strategic miscalculation corrected in good faith. Distance myself publicly. Counter the narrative before it solidifies.
"There's also the mother," one of them adds, sharing a chart on the screen. "Her comments created the perception problem. We can discredit the source without appearing aggressive."
I scroll through prepared language. Carefully worded. Bloodless. Effective. This is what competence looks like. I should feel relief.
Instead, something in my chest tightens.
"The lottery winner angle gives us leverage," another advisor continues. "We can position this as an impulsive decision made by someone overwhelmed by sudden wealth and attention."
"Her behavior with your son at CAMICon supports that framing," adds the PR specialist. "Impulsive. Disruptive. Dangerous."
They keep talking. How the narrative would shift. How Lindsay would be reframed as unstable. How her family dynamic could be leveraged to explain why the marriage failed without implicating me.
None of them say her name with malice.
They're discussing her like a variable. Like a risk profile.
Like something that can be reduced and redistributed to stabilize the whole.
I think of Lindsay sitting on the edge of the guest bed, trying not to take up space. Of her laughter. Of the way she never stopped being herself, even when the world kept telling her to shrink.
I picture Henry at breakfast, talking about her like she's a constant. Like gravity.
And I understand, with absolute clarity, what this plan would cost.
"No." The word lands harder than I intend. The meeting goes quiet.
