Page 19 of The Wife He Replaced
He pressed both hands flat on the counter. His head dropped forward. She could see his shoulders working, the effort of holding himself together, and she thought:now you know what it looks like. Now you know what I've been doing for months. Composure that costs everything. A body that stays upright while the ground dissolves.
"I love you," he said. His voice was barely audible. "I know that doesn't fix anything. I know I haven't earned the right to say it. But I love you, Mad. I've always loved you. I lost my way and I let someone into a space that belonged to you and I will spend the rest of my life regretting that. But please don't make a permanent decision based on what she said today. Please."
She looked at him. The man she'd married. Six-two, dark hair, brown eyes full of tears, his hands braced on the marble counter of the kitchen she'd designed. She loved him with every cell in her body. But it wasn't enough, and it had never been enough, because love without trust was just a wound that wouldn't close.
"I'll have a lawyer contact yours," she said.
Madeleine turned and walked out. She didn't look back. She took the elevator down, sat in her car in the parking garage, put her forehead on the steering wheel and cried. She cried the wayshe hadn't allowed herself to cry since any of this began — ugly, heaving sobs that came from somewhere deep in her ribs, shook her whole body and didn't stop for a long time.
CHAPTER 10
DREW
Drew calledVictoria before he'd stopped shaking.
Madeleine had been gone for less than five minutes. He could still smell her. Madeleine didn't wear perfume, just soap, cold air and something underneath that was purely her, the scent he'd been breathing for years and never catalogued because it had been as constant as oxygen. The penthouse still held the echo of her voice sayingI want a divorcewith a calm that was worse than screaming, worse than plates thrown or doors slammed, because calm meant she'd already grieved. Calm meant the decision had been made somewhere between Lark and the parking garage and she'd arrived with it finished, sealed, delivered.
Victoria picked up on the second ring. "Drew, I?—"
"You went to her restaurant."
A pause. "She called you."
"She came here. She stood in our kitchen and asked me if I kissed you. She asked me if I talk about her like something I've outgrown. She asked for a divorce. My wife asked me for a divorce because you walked into her workplace and lied to her face."
"I didn't lie. I told her the truth about?—"
"You told her I kissed you."
Silence.
"I want you at the office in one hour," he said. "I'll have Tom clear your things."
"Drew, let's talk about this?—"
"One hour."
He hung up. He stood in the kitchen, gripped the counter and breathed until the shaking subsided enough for him to drive. Then he grabbed his keys from the console table, the console table where Madeleine's keys should have been, the hook where her coat should have hung, the foyer that should have smelled like bread or garlic or whatever she'd been cooking that day. He drove to Fishtown with his hands white on the steering wheel and his mind running a single loop:She asked for a divorce. She asked for a divorce. My wife asked me for a divorce.
He got there first. He sat at his desk and pulled up Victoria's equity agreement, her employment contract, the company bylaws governing partner removal. He read every clause. He made notes. He called the company's outside counsel, Ken Hsu, and outlined the situation in clipped, clinical sentences. When Ken asked him to slow down and repeat the part about the attempted kiss, Drew repeated it without inflection because inflection would have broken something in him that was currently load-bearing.
"That's sexual harassment," Ken said. "Unwanted physical advance in a workplace setting. If you want to pursue it?—"
"I don't want to pursue it. I want it in my pocket. I want her to know it's there."
"Understood. I'll draft the separation agreement tonight. You said she has eighteen percent?"
"Eighteen percent vested. The unvested portion reverts under the bad-actor clause. She also went to my wife's workplace and made false statements about our relationship. Told her we'dbeen romantically involved. Told her I'd kissed her. None of it happened."
"That's tortious interference with a marital relationship. In Pennsylvania, that's actionable."
"I don't want to sue her. I want her gone. Today. Clean. Final."
"I'll have the paperwork within two hours."
Victoria arrived forty minutes later. Drew heard her heels on the concrete before he saw her — that click he'd heard a thousand times, walking into his office, walking into board meetings, walking into rooms where she made herself indispensable. He'd admired that sound once. The confidence of it. The authority. Now it made his stomach turn.
She appeared in the doorway. She'd dressed for battle — a charcoal blazer, her hair pulled back, her face set in the expression she wore during hostile negotiations. She looked at the box Tom had left on the chair across from Drew's desk. Her jaw twitched.
