Then I heard his voice.
It drifted from his office downstairs, low and intimate, the kind of voice he had not used with me in nearly a year.
“I can’t keep living like this, Sarah.”
My hand tightened around the banister.
Sarah Bennett. His new development director. Twenty-nine, polished, ambitious, always laughing a second too long at Caleb’s jokes. I had invited her to Thanksgiving. I had poured wine for her in my own kitchen. I had told her which gallery Caleb loved most because she wanted to buy him a birthday present “from the team.”
I stepped down one stair.
Caleb continued.
“No, I’m telling her tonight. I already called Russell. The papers are ready. I want a divorce.”
The world did not explode dramatically. There was no scream inside my skull. No thunder. No shattered glass.
Only a strange and flawless stillness.
