He Quit, Sold the House, and Became Her Biggest Client's Boss

The next second she pressed her lips together, and the words came out clipped, forced through her teeth:

"Fine. Don't come crying to me later."

"I'll handle the follow-up on Rudolph's project myself. Don't kid yourself that this company grinds to a halt without you."

"You've got one month to hand over everything to Director Simmons. After that, I won't stand in your way."

She didn't wait for an answer. She just turned and walked back into the general manager's office.

The last thing I saw before the door closed was her draping a blanket over Rudolph, asleep on the couch.

The stomach really is an emotional organ. No matter how hard I played at not caring, I couldn't ignore the dull ache of it.

It didn't stop me from pulling out my phone and typing a message:

"Resignation in one month. We can discuss the rest of the terms in person."

By the time I'd switched trains twice and made it home that night, Elise still wasn't back.

Normally she drove and I took the subway, and she always beat me home.

I sat on the couch in the dark, not bothering with the lights, and let my eyes move slowly around the home we'd lived in for five years.

Back then Elise hadn't made general manager yet. We were both just ordinary designers.

We scraped and saved for a long time before we could pull together the down payment on this place.

It was in a bad part of town. The layout was awkward.

None of that mattered to me, not next to the feeling of having somewhere that was ours.

But sitting here tonight, for some reason, it suddenly felt like a stranger's home.

At ten o'clock Elise came in, a cake in her hand.

I went still for a moment.

We'd never had the habit of celebrating our anniversary.

Maybe the day had gone badly enough that she wanted to smooth things over.

She seemed surprised to find me on the couch. "Still up?"

I crossed the room, and my hand stopped halfway out.

Only half the cake was left. The heart in the center had been dug out and eaten.

It took me a few seconds to confirm it wasn't some deliberate design.

She set the cake on the dining table without much thought.

"I bought it to celebrate Rudolph's promotion, but he only had a few bites and stopped, said he had to watch his figure."

"I remembered you mentioned a while back you wanted cake, so I brought the rest home for you."

My throat felt blocked. I couldn't make a sound.

Back when we were still paying off the mortgage, I never bought myself anything decent. I made do with hand-me-downs from the guys.

Even at the grocery store I picked the bruised, marked-down stuff.

The day we cleared the mortgage, I told her: I, Toby Henson, would never again take what someone else had left behind.

And now she was handing me leftover cake. Cake she'd bought for another man.

When the sound of her shower started, I began drafting the divorce papers on my phone.

The next morning, Elise stood at the elevator with me.

I looked at her, puzzled. This wasn't when she usually left.

She was smiling faintly, replying to a message, and said it like it was nothing:

"Rudolph's not feeling well today. I'll swing by and pick him up."

"If I remember right, his apartment is a forty-minute detour for you?"

"Forty minutes is nothing. Just a press of the gas."

The mirror in the elevator caught both our faces.

One worn down past hiding. The other glowing, eyes fixed on a phone.

But my mind was still stuck on what she'd just said.

I thought of the time I'd been out running an errand and it was pouring, and I asked her to drive to the subway exit and pick me up.

She'd said, "Just grab a cab back. Taking the car out is too much of a hassle."

A ten-minute trip was a hassle. Forty minutes was just a press of the gas.

When we reached the ground floor, she hesitated. "You want a ride?"

I shook my head and stepped out of the elevator.

She let out a breath and hit the button to close the doors.

When the display showed B1, I pulled out my phone and called Rudolph.