Chapter 23
The wine glass slipped from her fingers.
Astoria watched it fall in what felt like slow motion—the stem rotating, the bowl catching the last gray light from the windows—and then it hit the kitchen tile and shattered.
Dark red wine splashed across the white floor, pooling between the shards like something wounded.
She should clean it up. Get the broom and some paper towels, then wipe away the evidence of her carelessness before it stained the grout. That's what she would normally do. That's what the controlled, competent Astoria Shepry would do.
Instead, she stood there.
The house was silent around her. It had been four weeks of holding herself together at work, in meetings, in front of Gloria and the board and everyone who watched her for signs of weakness.
She was so tired of holding herself together.
The wine crept slowly across the tile, finding the spaces between the broken pieces. Astoria stared at it and felt something crack open in her chest, a quiet fracture that spread through her like the wine spreading across her floor.
She lowered herself to the ground with none of the poise she'd spent a lifetime perfecting. She just sat down, right there on the kitchen floor, her back against the cabinet and her legs folded beneath her, broken glass three feet away.
The tears didn't come. They never came anymore. But something worse happened instead: she felt the weight of every single day she'd spent pretending she was fine, and she couldn't make herself get up.
Miller had been gone for twenty-five days. Astoria had counted every one of them.
She sat on the kitchen floor until the light faded completely and the wine dried to a dark stain she'd have to explain to the cleaning staff. Then she pulled herself up, cleaned up the glass with no emotion, and went to bed without dinner.
The next day, the conference room smelled like stale coffee and expensive cologne, the particular scent of negotiations that had gone on too long.
Astoria sat at Gerald's right, her posture perfect, her face composed, and her hands folded on the mahogany table in front of her. The ice queen, exactly as expected.
Across the table, Rachel Hartwell was making her case for the third time this afternoon.
“My client's contributions to the marriage extended far beyond the formal COO role,” Rachel said, her voice measured and professional. “The social capital, the networking, the public-facing responsibilities that allowed Ms. Shepry to focus on business development—”
“None of which entitles her to fifty percent of a company she didn't build.” Gerald's interruption was smooth, almost bored. They'd been over this ground before. “Shepry Global existed for eight years before Ms. Dane joined. The valuation at the time of marriage was already—”
Astoria stopped listening. She’d heard these arguments a hundred times and could recite them in her sleep, if she were sleeping, which she wasn't. Twenty-six days of fragmented rest, food that tasted like cardboard, and work that filled every waking hour because the alternative was feeling something, and she couldn't afford to feel anything.
Miller was sitting behind Rachel in the second row, against the wall, a legal pad balanced on her knee.
She wasn't on the case anymore, and Astoria knew that. Miller had recused herself months ago, before everything fell apart. But she still worked at the firm, still got pulled into meetings like this one, still existed in the same professional orbit that Astoria couldn't escape.
It’d been four weeks since Miller had stood in her living room and said I have to end this. Four weeks of walls and numbness and surviving, and now Miller was twenty feet away, close enough that Astoria could see the shadows under her eyes.
She looked worn. Thinner than before, her cheekbones sharper, her blazer sitting differently on her shoulders. The warmth that usually animated her features had dimmed to something contained.
She’d been suffering too.
The observation landed somewhere in Astoria's chest and lodged there, uncomfortable and unwanted. She didn't want Miller to be suffering. But she didn't want to feel the pull of sympathy, of longing, of the desperate urge to cross the room and touch her.
“Ms. Shepry?”
Gerald’s voice cut through, and Astoria blinked, refocusing.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice steady. “Could you repeat the question?”
Rachel was watching her with sharp eyes. Valerie, seated at Rachel's left, was watching her, too, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth. She'd noticed Astoria's distraction. Of course she had. Valerie noticed everything, catalogued every weakness, and saved them for later use.
“The proposed division of the Harbor Point property,” Gerald said smoothly, covering for her. “Rachel is suggesting a sixty-forty split.”
“No.” Astoria didn’t hesitate. “Harbor Point was acquired three years before the marriage with funds from my personal trust. It's not a marital asset.”
The negotiation continued. Astoria participated when required, her responses crisp and precise, her ice queen armor firmly in place. But her awareness kept drifting across the table, catching on Miller like a hangnail catching on silk.
Miller wasn’t looking at her. Her attention stayed fixed on her legal pad, her pen moving occasionally, her expression giving nothing away.
But Astoria knew her well enough to recognize the tightness at the corners of her eyes and the rigid set of her shoulders.
She knew that blankness was a mask, the same way Astoria's composure was a mask.
They were both performing and pretending like they were fine.
The afternoon dragged on. Valerie's demands escalated rather than diminished—more money, more properties, a larger stake in the company she'd contributed nothing material to.
Rachel presented each demand professionally, but even she seemed to recognize the unreasonableness of it.
Her arguments grew more perfunctory, her glances at Valerie more frequent.
It was clear that Valerie didn’t want a settlement; she was out for blood.
At four-fifteen, Gerald called for a break. “Fifteen minutes,” he said. “I think we could all use some air.”
Everyone stood, stretched, and reached for their phones. The court reporter stepped out. Rachel leaned over to confer with Valerie in low tones, her face giving nothing away.
Astoria walked to the window. The view looked out over downtown Phoenix Ridge, the late afternoon sun casting long shadows between the buildings.
She pressed her palm against the glass, feeling the warmth of it, grounding herself in something physical because everything else felt like it was floating away.
She sensed Miller before she heard her—a shift in the air, a presence approaching from the left, stopping only three feet away. Close enough to speak quietly, but far enough to maintain propriety.
They stood side by side, both facing the window, neither looking at the other. Astoria could feel her pulse in her throat.
“How are you?” Miller’s voice was quiet, almost tentative.
“Fine.” The word came out automatically. “You?”
“Yeah, fine.”
They both knew the lies for what they were.
Astoria stared at the city below and felt the weight of everything she wanted to say pressing against her ribs. I miss you. I can't sleep. I reach for my phone to text you and then remember. You were right to leave and I hate you for it and I love you and please, please come back.
She said none of it.
“I should—” Miller gestured vaguely toward the table.
“Yes.”
Miller walked away, and Astoria stayed at the window another moment, breathing through the ache in her chest, forcing her expression back into neutrality before she turned around.
The break ended, and everyone took their seat. Gerald made a final offer—generous, reasonable, designed to end this before trial.
Valerie, of course, rejected it immediately.
“That’s not acceptable.” She leaned forward, her eyes fixed on Astoria with an intensity that bordered on feral.
“I want a public acknowledgment. A statement admitting that the failure of this marriage was due to Astoria's emotional unavailability and neglect.”
The room went quiet.
“You want me to say I was a bad wife.” Astoria’s voice was flat.
“I want the truth.” Valerie's smile was sharp and satisfied. “I want everyone to know what it was like being married to someone incapable of love.”
Astoria felt something bloom behind her sternum—rage, grief, the desperate urge to defend herself—before she crushed it immediately.
“No,” she said.
“Then we'll let a judge decide.” Valerie sat back, arms crossed, triumph radiating from every line of her body. “I'm sure the court will be very interested in hearing about your emotional deficiencies.”
Gerald gathered his papers. “I think we’re done here.”
“The trial is set for August nineteenth.” Rachel's voice was professional, but there was something tired in it. “We'll see you then.”
Everyone stood. Papers shuffled, briefcases closed, and polite professional murmurs filled the space. Valerie shot Astoria a look of pure venom before sweeping toward the door, Rachel following with a resigned expression.
Miller hung back, organizing her files.
Astoria walked toward the exit, and the path took her past Miller's chair. There was no way around it, no route that wouldn't bring her within arm's reach of the woman she'd spent four weeks trying not to think about.
For a moment, they were side by side, close enough to touch, close enough that Astoria caught the faint lavender scent of her shampoo. Everything in her screamed to stop, to turn, to say something, anything, to reach out and bridge the impossible distance between them.
She kept walking.
Out the door, down the hallway, into the elevator where she jabbed the button for the lobby and watched the doors slide closed. The moment she was alone, the mask slipped.
It came rushing up all at once—the grief, the longing, the bone-deep exhaustion of pretending to be fine when nothing had been fine since Miller walked out of her house and didn't look back.
She pressed her spine against the elevator wall and stared at the ceiling and breathed through the pressure building behind her eyes.
She wouldn’t cry. Not here, not anywhere.
The elevator dinged, and the doors opened. Astoria straightened her spine, smoothed the tension from her face, and walked through the lobby like a woman who had everything under control.
The August heat hit her the moment she stepped outside, thick and oppressive, the sun still brutal even at five o’clock.
She walked to her car, unlocked it, and slid in the driver’s seat.
The leather was hot and sticky against her back, but she didn’t turn on the air conditioning yet.
She just sat there, feeling shattered on the inside.
God, she was tired of just surviving.
Astoria started the car and drove home through Phoenix Ridge in silence.
Her home would be empty by time she arrived, and the ocean would be a murky gray in the evening light.
She would pour a glass of wine she wouldn’t drink and stand on the deck and feel nothing because feeling nothing was easier than feeling this.