Chapter 2

"Thank you," I said, straightening up, my pulse still thudding somewhere near my throat.

He didn't let go right away. Up close, he was even more unsettling. Dark suit, darker eyes.

"You're welcome." His voice was low, a little rough around the edges, like he didn't use it more than he had to.

A man with an earpiece appeared at his shoulder. "Mr. Gray, the car's here. We need to make the next flight."

He gave me one last unreadable look, then turned toward a waiting Rolls-Royce. As he walked away, I caught fragments of what his assistant was saying. Something about a family, a search that had gone nowhere, an old doctor's name I couldn't quite catch. Then the door shut, and the words disappeared with him.

I stood on the curb longer than I needed to, one hand pressed against my chest. I wasn't sure why my heart was still racing. It had nothing to do with the car that had almost hit me.

By the time I got home, Rosa was already at the door, reaching for my bag.

"Ma'am, where were you all day? Mr. Lowe called to check on you."

"I'm fine. I was out with a friend." I handed her my coat. "I'm taking a short trip soon. Go ahead and take some time off, too."

She blinked. "But he's not back until the weekend—"

"I've decided." Sharper than I meant it.

Rosa had never once been unkind to me, not the way the ones before her had, and she didn't deserve the edge in my voice. But I didn't have room tonight for anyone else's opinion of my own life.

"Pack your things. No need to make dinner." She nodded slowly, her hurt not quite hidden, and I hated myself a little for it.

I barely had the strength to hold myself together, let alone explain why I needed to leave.

The bedroom was full of us. Photo albums. A crooked ceramic bowl from a pottery class in our second year together. The necklaces he'd given me the first one eight years ago, in a hospital in Switzerland.

Back then, my father was still alive, still running the clinic. And Nathaniel was nobody — a broke young man caught in an avalanche with a tour group, with no insurance, no money, and a hospital that wouldn't operate without a deposit.

My father operated anyway. I was doing my residency then, and I stood at his side through the whole surgery. It took nine hours. Nathaniel lived.

When he woke up, he grabbed my father's hand and said he would repay our family somehow, someday. Everyone laughed it off. Gratitude talks big in hospital beds.

Two years later, he came back with a ring. He said the avalanche had shown him what mattered, that he wanted to spend his life with the family that had given him his. The first necklace came with the proposal. So did the ginger tea — he learned to make it because my cramps kept me up at night, and he said a man should take care of the woman who saved his life.

My father was gone by then. There was no one left to ask whether a promise made on a hospital bed counted as a promise at all.

Five years later, standing in this bedroom, I finally asked myself the question I'd been too grateful to ask: had he ever loved me? Or had he just needed a doctor's daughter, a wife who made him look like a man who deserved his luck?

I thought I might cry when I started packing. Instead, I felt strangely numb. Perhaps I'd already cried enough over the years without realizing it.

I kept my grandfather's books. The worn volumes of herbal formulas and the acupuncture charts he'd spent sixty years refining had been sealed away the day I married Nathaniel. He wanted me to be a housewife, staying home instead of pursuing my career or appearing in public.

Not anymore.

Everything else went. The jewelry, the bags, the gifts, the life Nathaniel had built around me like a cage dressed up as a present. I photographed each item to put it up for sale. I wouldn't be cheap about leaving, and I wouldn't let sentiment keep me trapped.

By the time I checked my phone, I had eighteen missed calls.

Rosa said you're taking a trip. Since when do you go anywhere without me? Wait for me and we'll go together.

I almost laughed.

The man juggling a pregnant mistress across town still found time to worry about my travel plans.

I told him Lauren's boyfriend had cheated, that she'd ended up in the hospital, and that I wanted to get her out of the city for a few days. He believed me instantly.

Of course he did. Cheating was clearly a subject he understood from experience.

My wife is loyal to her friends. Go, spend whatever you need. I don't work this hard just to watch you save money.

Ten minutes later, two hundred thousand landed in my account.

I stared at the number for a long moment. Every time he'd disappeared for more than a few days over the past three years, money had shown up like this. I used to think it was his way of making up for lost time, a reminder that no matter how busy he was, he still cared.

Now I knew better.

It was guilt wearing a nicer coat.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I typed one more message.

Do you think all men eventually get tired of what they have? If you ever did, would you tell me, or let me find out myself?

Three minutes passed.

Vivi, I'm not like other men. I will never betray you. There's only ever been you.

My hands were shaking by the time I set the phone down.

If I hadn't gone to that appointment, I might have believed every word for the rest of my life. I might have kept waiting for him to come home, kept thanking him for his gifts, kept telling myself that the man I loved was still the man who loved me.

But I knew the truth now. And once you saw it, you couldn't make yourself unsee it.

He wasn't getting off that easily. We might not have a legal marriage, but I would still walk away with half of everything he thought he owned.

He and Chloe could split whatever was left.

I barely slept that night. In the morning, I ignored Nathaniel's messages and answered when Mr. Whitmore called instead.

He'd run R&D at Lowe Pharmaceuticals since before I was born. He'd also known me since I was twelve, when I used to trail my grandfather through his old clinic, taking notes I only half understood and asking questions no one else had the patience to answer.

"Mrs. Lowe, hate to bother you, but we've hit a wall on a formulation. Would you take a look?"

Two hours later, fighting nausea the whole time, I found what his team had missed and sent it back with detailed notes.

"You're a miracle," he said. "I keep telling Nathaniel this department runs better with you emailing favors than with half the staff we actually pay."

Nathaniel had made me a director once. Not because he believed I'd earned it, but because someone in the break room had mocked my background, and firing them was easier than admitting his wife might actually be good at something.

He'd never asked what I did with the title.

He didn't know that half the compounds his own company sold had my fingerprints on them, quietly developed through Whitmore long after I'd stopped showing up in person. I'd let Nathaniel believe I was content to be his wife, never realizing how much of myself I'd put aside to make his life easier.

I was done doing that.

"I'm coming back next week," I told Whitmore.

He hesitated. "Does Mr. Lowe know?"

"He will."

I wasn't asking for Nathaniel's blessing. I needed to see the company from the inside before deciding exactly how much of it I planned to take with me.

That evening, Nathaniel called again, his voice warm and familiar.

"Baby, are you eating enough? Getting some rest?"

I gave him the bare minimum, staring at the ceiling instead of the phone. It was strange how easily I could still recognize the little changes in his voice, even when I no longer trusted the man behind them.

"Whitmore mentioned you're coming back to work. What brought that on?"

"The doctor thinks a change of scenery might help the odds."

It wasn't even a complete lie.

He laughed, easy and indulgent, in the tone you'd use on a child who'd announced she wanted to be an astronaut.

"If it makes you happy, go. I'll tell them to keep things light for you. Somewhere to be, not somewhere to work."

I said nothing. There wasn't a version of my response that wouldn't start a fight, and I was saving all my fighting for later.

Then, faintly, I heard a soft voice from his end of the line.

"Nathan, help me with my hair?" —and under it, Chloe's voice.

"Who’s there? " I asked.

"Oh, Chloe's father is here on business, and she stopped by to say hello."

What a flimsy lie. The laughable part was that I had never once doubted lines like this before.

"Are you sure you're not lying to me?" I asked, my voice cold.

"Why would I?" He let out a short, guilty laugh. "You say the strangest things. She's like a sister to me."

Then, still with traces of laughter in his voice, he added, more quietly, "I'll have someone send you something nice this week. To make up for being away."

I hung up first, for once.

And for the first time in five years, I didn't wait for him to call back.