3. Wilson #2
“We’re already at maximum cruising speed, sir.”
“Then call ahead. Have a car waiting on the tarmac. I need to get to Manhattan the second we touch down.”
“Of course, sir.” She takes the cold meal with her when she goes.
Three hours. Three more hours of this cabin and this silence and memories I can’t turn off.
I sink back into my seat and stare at the ceiling. Sleep won’t come. It hasn’t come since the video leaked, since I watched my name trend next to the words affair, scandal, oblivious wife.
Oblivious wife.
She’s not oblivious. She’s never been oblivious. She saw everything. She noticed everything. She felt me pulling away and she kept reaching for me anyway, kept trying to close the gap even as I made it wider. She loved me through all of it.
I sent flowers.
The satellite phone rings. I grab it, hoping somehow it’s her calling from a different number, but the screen shows Isaac’s name.
“What now.” I press the phone against my ear and close my eyes.
“The board moved up their meeting.” His voice is tight with panic. “They’re convening in one hour. They want you on video.”
“I’m on a plane over the Pacific Ocean.”
“I know that. They don’t care.” He exhales hard. “They’re talking about asking for your resignation, Wilson. They think you’ve become a liability.”
“Let them talk.” I watch the clouds slide past the window.
“This is serious. You could lose the company. Everything you’ve built for the last decade…”
“I’ve already lost everything that matters.” I hang up and turn off the satellite phone.
The cabin goes quiet. Just the hum of the engines and the soft rattle of ice melting in a glass I never touched.
I close my eyes and see Izzy on that dirty carpet, her head on my shoulder, telling me she doesn’t want expensive.
I bought her everything expensive. I thought that was the point. I thought that was what I was working for.
***
The jet touches down at Teterboro just after five in the morning.
The sky is still dark.
Rain is coming, I can smell it when the cabin door opens.
A black car idles on the tarmac, exhaust curling white in the cold air. I’m down the stairs and into the back seat before the engines finish winding down.
“Take me to the penthouse.” I slam the door. “And please, as fast as you can.”
The driver doesn’t ask questions.
The car lurches forward and I grip my knees to keep my hands still. Manhattan slides past the windows, mostly dark at this hour, just streetlights and the occasional taxi and the people who have nowhere else to be before dawn.
She’s probably asleep.
She’s probably at the penthouse, in our bed, and when I walk in she’ll wake up and we’ll fight and I’ll apologize and she’ll forgive me the way she always does.
She always forgives me.
She has to forgive me.
The elevator crawls upward. I watch the floor numbers climb and my chest gets tighter with every one. The doors open on our floor and I’m running before they finish sliding apart.
The front door is unlocked.
I push it open and the apartment is dark and quiet. It isn’t the quiet of a person sleeping. It’s the quiet of no one.
“Izzy?” My voice bounces off the marble. “Izzy, are you here?”
Nothing answers.
I move through the rooms, slapping at light switches, past the dining table we’ve eaten at maybe three times, into the bedroom, to the closet.
Half empty.
Half her clothes are gone, the pieces she actually wears, the jeans and sweaters. The suitcase from the top shelf is missing. Her toiletries are gone from the bathroom. Her grandmother’s jewelry box isn’t on the dresser.
She left. She actually left.
I walk back to the kitchen because I don’t know where else to go. My legs barely carry me. My vision keeps blurring and I have to blink hard to clear it.
The espresso machine sits on the island, gleaming and silent. I bought it for her birthday three years ago. She taught herself to use it from YouTube videos because I was never here in the mornings to show her.
I was never here. I was always somewhere else, building a thing I told myself was for us.
Metal catches the light on the marble countertop.
I move closer. My heart stops.
Her wedding rings.
They’re sitting on the island, two small circles that used to live on her finger. The engagement ring I upgraded in year three, two carats, platinum setting. The wedding band she said she didn’t need, because all she needed was me.
I pick up the rings. They’re cold. Of course they’re cold. She left them hours ago, maybe longer. But some part of me expected them to still be warm from her skin.
There’s a piece of paper underneath.
I pick it up with hands that won’t hold still. Her handwriting. I’d know it anywhere. That looping cursive she learned from her grandmother, the same hand that used to tuck notes into my luggage before every trip, and grocery lists on the fridge, and nothing at all for the last two years.
Two lines.
I don’t love you anymore, Wilson.
I want a divorce.
I read it again.
The words don’t change. They just sit there on the paper, permanent and final.
She loves me. She’s always loved me. Even when I forgot. Even when I failed her. Even when I chose the company over her a thousand times in a thousand small ways. She loved me through all of it, and I wasn’t there to see it.
I crumple the note in my fist and sink to the floor with my back against the island. The marble is cold through my shirt. The rings dig into my palm. I can’t seem to let them go.
I should have been there. I should have been on that plane. I should have been sitting across from her at that table, holding her hand, telling her she was the only thing that mattered.
I smooth the note out on my knee and read it through the tears I can’t stop.
I don’t love you anymore.
Anymore.
That word guts me. Anymore means she used to. Anymore means there was a time when she loved me completely, when she would have forgiven anything, when I could have fixed this with a single flight home.
I made her wait too long. I made her sit alone at tables and sleep alone in beds and celebrate alone on anniversaries while I chased deals that didn’t matter. She kept waiting, and I never came.
I let my head fall back against the island, hard enough to feel it.
I should have fought for her before she stopped fighting for us. I should have come home.
My fist closes around the note again.
She has to be lying.
Because if she isn’t… if she really stopped loving me while I was too busy to notice.
Then the video isn’t what ended my marriage.
I am.