16. Benedict
— ? —
Benedict
The grocery bags are heavy in my hands, but I’ve learned to carry them quietly now.
Three trips up the narrow stairwell of Clara’s building, past the neighbor’s door with the yapping Pomeranian, past the flickering light on the second landing that nobody’s fixed in weeks.
I know this building better than I know my own penthouse anymore.
Usually I leave the bags by the door and go. Don’t knock. Don’t linger.
That’s the rule I’ve made for myself - be useful, not intrusive. Show up, not show off.
Sometimes it’s harder than running a Fortune 500 company.
Harder than any negotiation I’ve ever survived.
Because every instinct I have screams to fix this, to throw money and resources at the problem until it goes away.
But Christine doesn’t need a billionaire.
She needs a husband who remembers how to be human.
So I learn.
I learn that she drinks chai lattes now instead of coffee - that somewhere in the wreckage of us, she changed, and I wasn’t there to witness it.
I learn that Isabella goes through diapers like they’re going out of style, that the organic brand with the little elephants doesn’t give her a rash the way the cheaper ones do.
I learn that Clara’s refrigerator makes a concerning noise every few hours, and that the super takes three days to return calls, and that sometimes the best thing I can do is leave a bag of groceries and disappear before anyone has to thank me for it.
I learn to be invisible in all the ways I should have been visible before.
Today is a scheduled visit. Every week, same time, written into my calendar like a board meeting - except this is the only meeting that matters anymore.
I’ve restructured my entire life around these hours.
Grayson redistributed Pauline’s responsibilities the week she was fired, and I am finally learning the difference between delegating work and delegating my family.
The door opens before I can knock.
Christine stands there with Isabella against her shoulder, and something in my chest cracks the way it does every time I see them. My girls. My whole world, condensed into two people who aren’t sure they want me anymore.
“You’re early,” she says. Not accusatory. Just noting it.
“The train was empty.”
“You took the train?”
“And walked up from the station.”
Her eyebrows lift. The old Benedict Morgan would never have set foot on a subway platform. The old Benedict Morgan would have considered it beneath him, would have sent an assistant, would have-
I’m not him anymore. I don’t want to be.
“Come in,” she says, and steps aside.
***
Isabella’s crying is a language I’m learning to speak.
There’s the hungry cry - urgent, building, with that particular hitch in the middle that means now, not in five minutes, NOW.
There’s the tired cry - thinner, whinier, accompanied by the way she rubs her eyes with tiny fists.
There’s the gassy cry - sharp and sudden, her little legs pulling up toward her chest. And there’s the one I’ve come to think of as the existential crisis cry - loud, inconsolable, seemingly triggered by nothing except the general unfairness of being a very small person in a very large world.
Right now, she’s doing the tired one.
“May I?” I ask, and Christine hesitates for just a moment before transferring her to my arms.
The weight of her settles against my chest, and I close my eyes, breathing her in. Baby shampoo and something sweeter underneath, something that’s just her. I’ve missed so much. Those first weeks, those midnight feedings, those moments of terror and wonder that Christine faced alone while I was-
Don’t. Don’t go there. Not now.
I start walking. Slow circles around Clara’s small living room, my hand spread across Isabella’s back, my voice dropping into something low and rhythmic. I don’t even know what I’m saying - nonsense, mostly, fragments of songs I half-remember, promises I intend to keep.
“You’re different,” Christine says.
I look up. She’s standing in the kitchen doorway, arms crossed, watching me with an expression I can’t quite read. Something guarded. Something almost soft underneath.
“I’m trying to be who I should have been.”
“Why now? Why not before?”
The question cuts deeper than she probably knows. I’ve asked myself the same thing a thousand times in the dark of my hotel room, staring at the ceiling, cataloging every moment I chose wrong.
“Because before, I thought I had forever.” The words come slowly, dragged up from somewhere I’ve been afraid to look. “I thought you’d always be there. I thought I could earn your love later. After the next deal. The next crisis. I didn’t realize I was losing you one day at a time.”
Isabella’s crying has softened to whimpers. Her fist closes around a fold of my shirt, holding on.
“And now?”
“Now I know.” My voice breaks on it, and I don’t try to hide it. “Every moment matters. Every moment with you, with her-” I press a kiss to Isabella’s downy head. “I wasted so many. I won’t waste any more.”
Christine doesn’t respond.
But she moves. Crosses the small living room, sinks onto the couch beside the armchair where I’ve settled with our daughter. Not touching me. But close. Close enough that I can smell her shampoo, something floral and familiar, something that makes my chest ache with memory.
We sit in silence. Isabella’s breathing deepens, evens out, her body going heavy and warm against my chest. I don’t move. Don’t want to disturb her. Don’t want to disturb this moment, whatever it is - this fragile almost-peace that feels like the first green shoot pushing through scorched earth.
It’s not forgiveness.
But it’s a start.
The light shifts through Clara’s window, late afternoon gold spilling across the worn carpet.
Isabella makes a small sound in her sleep - not a cry, just a murmur, like she’s dreaming of something good.
Christine’s shoulder is an inch from mine.
I can feel the warmth of her through the space between us.
I think about all the evenings I should have been here.
All the dinners I missed, the bedtimes I skipped, the moments I traded for spreadsheets and conference calls.
I think about Christine decorating a nursery alone, assembling a crib from YouTube tutorials, screaming my name in a hospital room while I was thirty thousand feet in the air with my phone dead and my priorities shattered.
I will never forgive myself for that.
But maybe - maybe - I can build something new from the wreckage.
Isabella fusses in her sleep. A small sound, a shift of her tiny body.
Christine reaches for her at the same moment I do.
Our hands touch.
Both of us freeze.
Her fingers are cool against mine, her skin soft where it brushes my knuckles. I can feel her pulse - or maybe it’s my own, hammering so hard I can’t tell the difference. The contact is electric, charged with everything we haven’t said, everything we’ve been circling around for weeks.
Neither of us pulls away.
Isabella settles, her fussing resolved by something she wasn’t even aware of. But we stay there - my hand on her back, Christine’s hand on mine - frozen in a moment that feels like standing at the edge of a cliff.
I don’t breathe, don’t move.
I just hold on and hope.