Chapter 2

I didn't go home. I went to Ethan's office tower downtown.

The building was a monument to his success, a glass and steel middle finger to the sky. I walked through the lobby, the security guards nodding at me. Mrs. Thorne. The respectable, stable corporate wife.

I took the private elevator to the top floor. His executive assistant, Mark, saw me and his face went pale.

"Mrs. Thorne," he stammered. "He's... in a meeting."

"I know," I said, walking past him.

I stopped outside the glass wall of his corner office.

And there they were.

Ethan and Eleanor Reed-"Anna Bell"-were on his desk. His hands were tangled in her hair, their bodies pressed together in a way he had never, not once, touched me. The city of New York was a glittering backdrop to my husband's betrayal.

I couldn't hear them, but I could see them. I saw her laugh, throwing her head back. Then I saw Ethan say something, and she laughed harder.

I imagined her words, the ones she said in my office. "The one he doesn't love is the one who should leave."

I stepped closer to the glass, a phantom in my own life. I could read their lips now. I was an expert at reading people.

Eleanor's voice, a faint murmur through the thick glass, carried a single, sharp phrase.

"...can't believe you kept your 'joke' promise... celibate in your marriage all these years!"

A joke.

My patient support, my understanding of his "trauma," my quiet acceptance of a passionless marriage-it was all a joke to him.

The pitying looks from his colleagues at company parties. The sympathetic smiles from their wives. The way Mark could never quite meet my eyes. It all crashed down on me. They all knew. I was the fool. The last one to know.

I turned and walked away. I didn't run. My movements were calm, measured. The fixer, fixing her own broken life.

I left the divorce agreement I'd picked up from my lawyer on Mark's empty desk. A silent bomb.

As I waited for the elevator, the doors to Ethan's office opened.

"Ellie!" he called out, his voice full of the fake warmth I had mistaken for love.

He rushed over, his face a mask of loving concern. "Honey, what are you doing here? You should have told me you were coming."

He tried to kiss me. I turned my head. His lips brushed my cheek. It felt like a spider crawling on my skin.

"I just wanted to drop something off," I said, my voice flat.

"Are you okay? You look pale," he said, his hand on my arm.

I pulled away.

"I'm fine," I said. "I have to go."

The elevator doors opened. I stepped inside and pressed the button for the lobby, not looking back. I saw his confused face as the doors slid shut, erasing him from my sight. For a moment.