Chapter 2 - THE COST OF LEAVING
“It’s already canceled.”
The words left my mouth without raising the temperature in the room. I didn’t shout. I didn’t step toward her. I just stood there, leaning against the kitchen counter, watching the air leave her lungs.
Natalie’s brow furrowed, a delicate crease forming between her eyes. “What?”
“The wedding,” I said, keeping my voice entirely conversational. “It’s canceled. I called the venue on Tuesday. The caterer on Wednesday. The florist was very understanding. You’ll be getting a partial refund on the deposit your father put down. They mailed the check to his house yesterday.”
She stared at me. Her hands, still gripping her expensive leather purse, went completely white at the knuckles.
“You’re joking,” she whispered.
“I don’t joke about thirty thousand dollars, Natalie.”
She took a step back. For the first time in the two years I had known her, the carefully constructed mask of control she wore slipped entirely. She looked at the moving boxes stacked against the wall. She looked at the bare shelves. Then she looked back at me, her eyes wide with a sudden, suffocating panic.
“You canceled our wedding?” Her voice pitched higher. “Without telling me? Ryan, my family has booked flights. My grandmother is flying in from Seattle. My colleagues—”
“Your colleagues already know,” I interrupted gently. “At least, Garrett knows. I assume he’s the one you’re talking about.”
The silence that followed was absolute. Outside, the rain continued to beat against the living room window, a steady drumming sound that filled the empty space between us.
Natalie didn’t move. She didn’t blink. She looked like someone who had just stepped off a curb into the path of a speeding car.
“How?” The word barely made it past her lips.
I reached into the pocket of my jeans and pulled out a small, silver velvet box. I set it on the kitchen island. It wasn’t a ring box. It was flat and rectangular.
“You left your coat in my car three months ago,” I said. “The tan trench coat. The one you wore to that ‘late-night marketing strategy session.’”
She swallowed hard.
“It was raining that night, too,” I continued. “I brought it inside to dry it off. I was going to hang it in the closet. But a crumpled piece of paper fell out of the pocket.”
I didn’t need to tell her what it was. The memory was permanently burned into my retinas. A valet receipt from The Oak Room, an upscale hotel downtown. Dated for the night she told me she was in the office. Time-stamped at 1:15 AM. Paid with a credit card ending in 4402.
Garrett’s card.
“I didn’t want to believe it at first,” I said. “So I waited. I watched. I noticed how you changed your phone password. I noticed how you stopped asking about my day. I noticed that you started wearing that thin gold necklace. The one Garrett bought you for your ‘promotion.’”
Natalie’s hand flew to her collarbone, covering the delicate gold chain as if it had suddenly turned to fire.
“Ryan, I can explain—”
“You don’t have to.” I picked up the tape dispenser and finished sealing the last box. “You found someone better. You said it yourself.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she stammered, the tears finally welling in her eyes. It was a good performance. A month ago, it would have broken my heart. Now, it just looked exhausting. “I was just... I was scared, Ryan. You’ve been so distant since Sarah died. You’ve been entirely focused on Lily. I felt like I didn’t matter anymore.”
There it was.
The real knife in the dark.
My sister, Sarah, had passed away four months ago from a sudden aneurysm. She had left behind a six-year-old daughter, Lily. My niece. My blood. Since that day, my entire life had shifted to becoming a father to a little girl who woke up screaming for her mother every night.
Natalie hadn’t just been unfaithful. She had been resentful. She had complained that Lily’s toys ruined the aesthetic of the apartment. She had suggested, more than once, that Lily would be "better off" in a group home or with our distant cousins in Oregon until we "got our marriage settled."
That was the night I stopped loving Natalie Brooks.
“Don’t use my sister’s death to justify your affair,” I said, my voice dropping an octave.
I picked up my suitcase.
“Where are you going?” she asked, panic edging into her voice. “Ryan, we have an apartment together. We have a lease.”
“The lease expires at midnight,” I reminded her. “I didn’t renew it. I signed the paperwork to terminate it a month ago. I paid my half of the final utilities this morning.”
I walked toward the front door. She followed me, her heels clicking frantically against the hardwood floor.
“You can’t just leave!” she cried. “Where am I supposed to sleep? Where is my furniture? Ryan, my things!”
“Your things are in the garage,” I said, opening the front door. The cool night air rushed in. “The movers packed everything you own into twenty-seven boxes. Your suitcase is next to them. You have until tomorrow morning to hand the keys to the landlord, or he’s charging a daily holding fee.”
“Ryan, please!” She reached out, grabbing my sleeve. “We can fix this. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll call Garrett right now and tell him it’s over. Just please, don’t do this to me. My parents will kill me. The embarrassment—”
I looked down at her hand on my arm. Then I looked into her eyes.
“It’s already done, Natalie.”
I pulled my arm away, walked out the door, and closed it firmly behind me.
I didn’t look back.
I walked down the three flights of stairs to my truck, the rain soaking through my flannel shirt. I climbed into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and finally took my first real breath in ninety days.
The drive to the suburbs took forty minutes. I pulled into the driveway of a small, single-story ranch house I had quietly rented a month ago. The lights were on in the living room.
My mother met me at the door. She looked exhausted, the lines around her eyes deeper than they had been a year ago, but she offered a soft, knowing smile.
“Is it done?” she asked softly.
“It’s done.”
“How is she?”
“Panicking.” I took off my wet shoes. “Is Lily asleep?”
“She just dozed off,” my mother said, pointing toward the hallway. “She wanted to wait up for you, but she was too tired. She left her backpack on the kitchen table. I think she wanted to show you a drawing she made at school today.”
I smiled softly. The heavy, dark weight in my chest lifted slightly at the mention of my niece. I walked into the kitchen and flicked on the dim overhead light.
Lily’s small pink backpack was sitting on one of the wooden dining chairs. I unzipped the main compartment to pull out her folder.
Inside, tucked between a math worksheet and a permission slip, was a piece of white construction paper.
I pulled it out and turned it over.
It was a drawing of a house, colored in heavy, waxy crayons. A stick figure of Lily stood next to a taller stick figure of me. We were smiling. Above us, a yellow sun with jagged rays filled the corner.
It was beautiful. It was exactly what I needed to see.
But it was the back of the drawing that made my blood freeze.
I flipped the paper over. The drawing had been done on the back of a discarded printout.
It was a bank statement.
Not my bank statement. It was a printout of my late sister’s life insurance trust account—the $250,000 intended entirely for Lily’s care and future college tuition. I was the sole executor.
But there was handwriting in the margins. Red ink.
It was Natalie’s handwriting.
She had done math on the side of the page. She had calculated twenty percent of the total balance. Underneath that, she had written a single word: Garrett.
I stared at the paper, the ticking of the kitchen clock suddenly sounding like a hammer against an anvil.
Natalie hadn’t just been sleeping with her boss.
She had been looking for a way into my niece’s trust fund.
May you like
And looking at the bottom of the statement, I realized something even worse. The balance wasn't $250,000 anymore.
It was zero.
