5. Stefan #2
“Would she?” My mother’s voice was gentle. “You’ve been working constantly, Stefan. Building the new property. Managing the investors. When was the last time you actually sat down and asked your wife how she was doing?”
I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it. When had I last asked? Really asked, not just a passing “how was your day” on the way to bed?
“She said she felt invisible.” My mother continued. “She said you were so focused on work that she’d stopped existing to you. That you came home exhausted every night and barely spoke to her before falling asleep.”
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?” She tilted her head. “She seemed quite certain. She said she’d tried to talk to you about it, but you always brushed her off.”
Had I been dismissing her without even realizing it?
“She was crying, Stefan.” My mother’s voice softened. “She said she’d been holding it in for months, pretending everything was fine, smiling through events and dinners when inside she felt like she was falling apart.”
“Why wouldn’t she tell me?”
“She said she tried.” My mother sighed. “But every time she started to bring it up, something came up.”
The words landed like punches.
“So she left?” My voice cracked. “Without talking to me? Without giving me a chance to fix it?”
“She said she was afraid you’d talk her out of it.” My mother shook her head slowly. “She said you have a way of making everything seem better in the moment, but the problems never actually get solved. They just get postponed.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Maybe not.” My mother shrugged. “But it’s how she feels. And feelings don’t have to be fair to be real.”
I stood up and walked to the window, staring out at the manicured gardens without seeing them.
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know.” My mother’s voice came from behind me. “She didn’t tell me. She just said she needed space. Time to figure out who she was outside of being your wife.”
“What if she decides she doesn’t want to be my wife anymore?”
The silence stretched. When my mother finally spoke, her voice was careful.
“Then you’ll have to respect that decision, Stefan. You can’t force someone to stay who wants to leave.”
“I love her.”
“I know you do.” A hand touched my shoulder. “But sometimes love isn’t enough. Sometimes people need things that love alone can’t provide.”
I turned to face her. “Did you say something to her? Something that pushed her over the edge?”
“I listened to her.” My mother’s eyes met mine, steady and calm. “That’s all. I listened, and I told her that whatever she decided, she needed to do what was best for herself. That she deserved to be happy.”
“Happy without me.”
“Happy, Stefan. That’s all any of us want for the people we care about.” She squeezed my shoulder. “Go home. Get some rest. Give her the space she asked for. And maybe, when she’s ready, she’ll come back.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
My mother didn’t answer.
***
The weeks that followed were a blur.
I called Layla every day. Left voicemail after voicemail. Sent texts that went unanswered. Her phone was always off or out of range.
I hired investigators. Three different ones. They traced her to a gas station in Indiana and lost the trail. She’d covered her tracks well, using cash instead of credit cards, avoiding anywhere she might be recognized. When the papers came, I made myself call off the search.
Her parents were frantic. They called me daily, asking if I’d heard anything, begging me to find their daughter. I had nothing to tell them.
And then, three weeks after Layla disappeared, my mother called.
“Stefan.” Her voice was careful, measured. “I need you to come see me. There’s something I have to give you.”
I knew before I saw it. Before she slid the folder across her desk with that practiced sympathy on her face. I opened it and saw Layla’s signature at the bottom of each page.
Divorce papers.
Already signed.
“She sent these to me yesterday,” my mother said. “With instructions to pass them along to you.”
“No.” I shoved the folder back. “This isn’t real. She wouldn’t do this.”
“I’m afraid it’s very real.” My mother pushed it toward me again. “She asked me to handle everything. The lawyers. The proceedings. All of it.”
“Why you? Why wouldn’t she come to me herself?”
“She said she couldn’t face you.” My mother’s voice was gentle. “She said it would be too painful.”
“Painful for who?”
“For both of you, I imagine.” She folded her hands on the desk. “She wants it to be clean, Stefan. She doesn’t want to drag this out.”
“What about what I want?” My voice cracked. “Don’t I get a say in this?”
“You can fight it if you choose.” My mother shrugged. “But she’s made her position clear. She doesn’t want to see you. She doesn’t want to speak to you. She wants this marriage to be over.”
I stared at the papers in my hands. Layla’s signature, the one I’d watched her practice when she took my name, now signing herself away from me.
“This doesn’t make sense.” I was grasping at straws. “Three weeks ago she was happy. We were planning our anniversary. And now she wants a divorce?”
“People hide their true feelings all the time.” My mother’s voice was soft. “Maybe she was never as happy as you thought. Maybe she was just waiting for the right moment to leave.”
“That’s not true.”
“Then explain the papers in your hand.”
I couldn’t.
I’d signed them eventually. What else could I do? She’d refused every attempt at communication, and the papers already carried her signature. My mother said her lawyers would handle the filing. I never checked. I couldn’t bear to look at a decree with her name on it.
Clean and clinical and final. Like our marriage had been a contract, not a love story. Like she couldn’t stand to be in the same room with me.
I was about to hurl the whiskey glass when the door swung open.
“You’re still here.” Jaden stood in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest. He’d been my best friend since high school, and even his company couldn’t bring me out of my funk.
“Go away.”
“It’s midnight, Stefan.”
“I’m aware.”
He walked in anyway, dropping into the chair across from my desk. His eyes landed on the photograph in my hands.
“Four years.” His voice was flat. “Four years of this.”
“Don’t.”
“She left, man.” He leaned forward. “She signed the papers and she left and she never looked back. At some point, you have to stop punishing yourself.”
“I’m not punishing myself.”
“No?” He gestured around the dark office. “Then what do you call sitting alone at midnight, drinking whiskey and staring at her picture?”
I didn’t answer. What could I say? He wasn’t wrong.
“You can’t keep doing this.” His voice softened. “Just let her go.”
“I have let her go.”
“Bullshit.” He grabbed the whiskey bottle and moved it out of my reach. “Look. Your dad called. He’s sending you to Georgia. There’s a property he’s closing on this week. He wants you down there to see it through.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere.”
“Yeah, figured as much.” He stood up, headed for the door. “Go anyway. Get out of this city. Get out of this office. Maybe a change of scenery will help.”
“A change of scenery isn’t going to fix anything.”
“Maybe not.” He paused in the doorway. “But it can’t make things worse.”
He left without waiting for a response.
I sat in the silence for a long time, the photograph still in my hands. Layla’s smile. Layla’s eyes. The woman who’d been everything to me and had left me with nothing.
I pulled out my phone and texted my father.
Stefan: I’ll go. Send me the details.
His response came immediately.
Dad: Flight leaves tomorrow. 8 a.m. Don’t be late.
I looked at the photograph one more time. Then I put it in my desk drawer and closed it.
Time to stop staring at the past.
Even if I couldn’t stop thinking about it.