Chapter 17
Simon
For forty-eight hours, Simon had performed the role of the cheerful, unfazed father within the confines of his mother’s house.
He had built elaborate forts out of Kathryn’s expensive sofa cushions, ordered too much takeout, and played three exhaustive games of Monopoly.
He had poured every ounce of his shattered energy into ensuring Lily didn't feel the terrifying tremors of her collapsing world.
But as the antique clock in the hallway chimed five o'clock on Sunday evening, the illusion shattered. The weekend was over.
Simon knelt in the entryway, zipping up Lily’s bright pink overnight bag. The physical exertion of pretending was catching up to him, leaving his limbs feeling as though they were filled with wet sand.
"Do I have to go back now?" Lily asked, her small hands tugging anxiously at the hem of her sweater. She looked around the quiet foyer, her brow furrowed. "Why can't you just come home with me, Dad? The grown-up stuff is taking too long."
The innocent, devastating question lodged itself perfectly in the center of Simon’s chest, a serrated blade twisting in the muscle. He forced a smile, though his eyes burned with the effort of keeping the tears at bay.
"I know it feels like a long time, bug," Simon said, his voice thick and rough.
He reached out, smoothing her dark hair, inhaling the sweet, familiar scent of vanilla and childhood.
"But Mommy misses you so much, and she’s waiting for you.
And you have school tomorrow. You need to be ready for your play rehearsal, right? "
"I guess," Lily mumbled, looking down at her light-up sneakers. "But the house is too quiet when you're not there."
"I know," Simon whispered, pulling her into a tight, desperate hug. He pressed his face into her shoulder, closing his eyes against the crushing weight of what he had stolen from her. "I love you so much, Lily. More than anything."
"I love you too, Dad."
Kathryn stepped into the hallway, a soft, melancholy expression softening her sharp features. She held Lily’s coat. "Come here, sweet girl. Let's get you bundled up. Your mother just pulled into the driveway."
Simon stood up slowly, his joints aching. He didn't walk to the front door. He couldn't. He retreated into the shadowed depths of the front sitting room, positioning himself just behind the heavy velvet drapes of the bay window.
He watched as Kathryn opened the front door, leading Lily out onto the porch.
And then, he saw Audrey.
She stepped out of her dark sedan. Simon braced himself for the visual impact of his ruin. But as she walked up the concrete path to meet their daughter, the breath entirely left his lungs.
She did not look like the woman he expected.
Just five days ago, driven by a pathetic, masochistic urge to see her, Simon had driven to the upscale organic market downtown at ten o'clock in the morning, knowing with absolute certainty it was her routine shopping day.
He had hidden behind an endcap of imported teas like a coward, watching her navigate the produce aisle.
The memory flared violently behind his eyes: Under the harsh fluorescent lights of the market, Audrey had looked translucent.
A hollow, fragile shell of the vibrant, commanding woman he had married.
She had stood staring blankly at a display of apples, her hands trembling so violently she nearly dropped her basket.
She had looked like a ghost, entirely drained of blood and life.
Standing there, hidden in the aisle, the guilt had hit Simon with the force of a freight train.
He had suffocated on it, dry-heaving in the parking lot afterward, knowing with absolute, horrifying clarity that he was entirely responsible for her destruction.
But the woman standing on Kathryn’s walkway right now was not a ghost.
Audrey was wearing her classic tan trench coat, cinched sharply at the waist. Her hair was clean and swept back.
But it wasn't just her appearance; it was the architecture of her posture.
She stood taller. The rigid, brittle fragility that had defined her the week before had vanished, replaced by a solid, grounded strength.
When Lily ran into her arms, Audrey caught her with an easy, radiant smile that completely transformed her face—a smile that looked genuinely, impossibly alive.
She looked like a woman who was surviving. She looked like a woman who was healing.
And the realization that she was doing it without him, that she had found some secret reserve of oxygen in a world he had set on fire, stung him with a sharp, selfish agony.
Kathryn and Audrey exchanged a few polite, muted words on the walkway. Audrey’s gaze flicked briefly toward the house, her eyes scanning the dark windows, but her expression remained entirely unreadable. She didn't look angry. She just looked detached.
Simon stepped back deeper into the shadows, his hands clenched into tight fists at his sides, watching until the taillights of her car disappeared down the street.
∞∞∞
The gray, overcast morning matched the desolate landscape of Simon’s mind. He sat at Kathryn’s small kitchen table, staring blankly at a mug of black coffee that had gone stone cold an hour ago.
He had an appointment with Dr. Thorne at noon, and a meeting with a headhunter at two. He had to figure out how to untangle his equity from Lumière Events without triggering a catastrophic legal battle with David, but his brain refused to process the logistics.
"You need to eat something," Kathryn said, walking into the kitchen and setting a plate of dry toast on the table in front of him. "You look like you haven't slept in a month."
"I'm not hungry, Mom," Simon rasped, rubbing a heavy hand over his exhausted face.
"Simon, starving yourself in my kitchen is not an acceptable form of penance," Kathryn retorted sharply, taking the seat across from him. "You have to function. You have to build a life from this, or it will swallow you whole."
Before Simon could argue, the sharp, authoritative chime of the front doorbell echoed through the house.
Kathryn frowned, glancing at the clock on the stove. "I'm not expecting anyone."
"I'll get it," Simon said. He welcomed the distraction, pushing back from the table and walking heavily down the hallway.
He pulled the front door open.
Standing on the porch was a man in his late forties, wearing a windbreaker and a completely bored expression. He held a thick, manila envelope in his hand.
"Simon?" the man asked, glancing down at a clipboard.
"Yes," Simon replied, his pulse giving a sudden, erratic kick.
"I have a delivery for you. I just need a signature right here confirming you're the recipient," the man said, holding out a pen and the clipboard.
Simon stared at the pen. The air in the foyer suddenly dropped ten degrees.
The instinct of a man who had spent a decade navigating high-stakes corporate contracts and crisis management recognized the exact shape and weight of the moment.
His hand trembled slightly as he took the pen and scrawled his name on the designated line.
"Thank you," the man said, ripping off the pink carbon copy and handing the heavy envelope to Simon. "You've been served. Have a good day."
The man turned and walked back to his idling sedan.
Simon stood perfectly still in the open doorway, the cold morning air washing over him. The envelope in his hands felt impossibly heavy, as if it contained lead instead of paper. He didn't need to open it. He knew exactly what it was.
"Simon? Who was it?" Kathryn called from the kitchen.
He slowly pushed the front door shut, the latch clicking with a devastating finality. He walked back into the kitchen like a man walking to the gallows, dropping the thick envelope onto the center of the wooden table.
In the upper left corner, stark black letters read: Smith & Harrington: Family Law.
Kathryn looked at the envelope, then up at her son. All the sharp, maternal authority drained from her face, leaving behind a profound, quiet sorrow.
"Open it," Kathryn said softly.
Simon’s fingers were numb as he tore the sealed flap. He pulled out the thick stack of premium, watermarked paper. The harsh, legal font blurred in his vision, but the title at the top of the first page was agonizingly clear.
Petition for Dissolution of Marriage.
"She didn't wait," Simon whispered, the words scraping out of his dry throat. He dropped the papers onto the table as if they were burning his skin. "I thought... I thought we would go to counseling. I thought we would have a separation period. She filed it. It's real."
"Of course it's real, Simon," Kathryn said, her voice a gentle, breaking sound. She reached across the table, placing her hand firmly over his trembling fingers. "What did you expect? Audrey is a woman of action. She maps the damage, and she amputates to save the rest of the body."
"I can't sign this," Simon choked out, panic rising like a tidal wave in his chest, entirely suffocating him. He stared at the bold, slashing ink of Audrey’s signature on the final page—the undeniable proof that she had severed him completely.
"Mom, I can't let her go. I have to call her. I have to talk to her."
He reached frantically for his phone, but Kathryn’s hand shot out, gripping his wrist with surprising, iron-like strength.
"No," Kathryn commanded, her dark eyes flashing with absolute authority. "You will not call her. You will not disrupt her peace because you are drowning in your own consequences."
"She is my wife!" Simon shouted, the sudden, feral desperation tearing from his throat.
"Not anymore," Kathryn countered, her voice dropping to a fierce, unrelenting whisper.
"You made sure of that in a hotel room, Simon.
She has drawn a boundary. She has hired an attorney.
If you truly love her, if you have one shred of respect left for the mother of your child, you will not fight this. You will let her heal."
Simon stared at his mother, the fight draining entirely out of his body, leaving him a hollowed-out, ruined shell.
He looked back down at the divorce petition.
The ghost he had seen at the market was gone.
The woman who had stood on the walkway yesterday wasn't waiting for him to save her.
She had already saved herself, and this stack of paper was the proof.
He sank down into the wooden chair, buried his face in his hands, and finally wept for the absolute, irreversible death of his life.