The telephone slipped out of my fingers and fell onto the hardwood floor
I didn't pick it up.
My hands wouldn't stop shaking.
"Ma'am?" The nurse's voice came through the speaker, tiny and distant. "Ma'am, are you still there? Your test results"
I picked the phone before she could say it again. Before the word could echo off the walls of this empty house and bury itself deeper into my chest.
"I heard you." My voice didn't sound okay it was too thin and too hollow. "Thank you. For calling." I told her
"Ma'am, you should come in for a follow-up appointment. Given the circumstances, we need to discuss"
"I said I've heard you", I told her
Silence on her end, I squeezed my eyes shut, pressed my palm against my stomach. It felt the same as yesterday, flat, empty, Nothing but the familiar ache of existing.
"Monday," I whispered. "I'll come Monday"
I hung up before she could respond.
The house swallowed the silence whole. Forty-second floor, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Central Park, furniture I'd picked out myself from catalogs Sebastian never looked at. The dining table never used. The guest bedrooms stayed made up, never occupied. The kitchen gleamed like a showroom because I cooked for one and ate standing at the counter.
Three years of marriage.
Three years of this same nonsense
The front door opened.
I knew the sound of his footsteps, confident, unhurried. The footsteps of a man who owned everything he surveyed, including the woman waiting inside.
Sebastian Brooks.
CEO of Brooks Industries, net worth of twenty billion, named one of Forbes' Most Eligible Bachelors the year before our wedding, back when society pages called us the couple of the season. Back when I still believed love could grow between two people thrown together by circumstance.
I stayed where I was, standing in the living room, staring at nothing. Let him find me like this, let him see.
He walked past the entryway, past the kitchen, and stopped at the edge of the Persian rug, Black suit, white shirt, no tie. Dark hair perfectly tousled, jaw sharp enough to cut glass. At thirty-five, Sebastian Brooks looked like he had been carved from marble and money, his eyes swept over me, cold, assessing. The same look he gave quarterly reports.
"You're home early," I said.
"Am I?" He pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket. Cream-colored. Expensive. "I didn't realize you kept track of my schedule anymore."
I didn't. He made that clear months ago.
He crossed the room and held out the envelope.
I stared at it. "What is it?"
"Open it." he said
I was so surprised
My fingers wouldn't move. Something in his voice, flat, final, the way he fired executives who disappointed him. I had heard that voice a hundred times on conference calls I wasn't meant to overhear.
I had never heard it directed at me.
"Sebastian"
"Just open it, Lilian"
My name, not Lily, not the nickname he used to call me, not the name he usually calls me in our first year together, when he still pretended to care. He called me Lilian, it was cold, formal, i mean that's the name on our marriage certificate.
I took the envelope
My hands shook so badly I nearly dropped it twice before tearing through the seal. Inside, a single sheet of paper, it was legal grade. Letterhead from his attorneys at Sterling & Roth.
I read the first line.
Petition for Dissolution of Marriage.
The words blurred.
I read it again and again
Dissolution of Marriage, Irreconcilable differences, no contest expected, assets to be divided per prenuptial agreement executed on June 12th
It felt like my whole world came crumbling apart
"Sebastian" My voice cracked. I looked up at him and asked what this is
Divorce papers he said Already signed her added, You'll need to sign as well, then my attorneys will file
For a Divorce? I asked, The word came out wrong, too loud, too raw. You're divorcing me Sebastian?
"We were never really married, Lilian, not in any way that mattered."
The paper crumpled in my fist. I felt it happen, felt my fingers close, but I couldn't stop them. "Three years, three years I've been your wife and in those three years, you've been cold, distant and indifferent towards me, I've endured all your tantrums and now you're, just handing me papers like I'm a business deal gone wrong?"
"You knew what this was from the beginning."
"Did I?" I stepped closer to him, close enough to smell his cologne, the one I had picked out for his birthday two years ago. Close enough to see the cold gray of his eyes, empty of anything resembling feeling. Because I remember vows, I remember promises, I remember everything
"Promises?" A muscle twitched in his jaw. The first crack in that perfect composure. "You want to talk about promises, Lilian? What about the promise that we would build something real? That you would be my partner, my wife, someone I could trust?"
"I am your wife."
"Are you?" He reached into his pocket again. Pulled out his phone. Swiped through something. Turned the screen toward me.
A photograph
A restaurant patio, Santa Monica, from the look of the ocean in the background. Two people at a table, leaning close, laughing.
A man I had never seen before.
And me
My stomach dropped.
It's not what you think, I said.
"Don't." His voice cut like glass, he didn't even allow me explain myself he then said "I had you followed Lilian. After the third time you came home late, after the fifth time you said you were 'visiting your mother' when I knew damn well your mother was in Boca that week. I hired someone. He took this two weeks ago."
Two weeks ago.
I had been in a meeting in LA two weeks ago. Meeting with.....
"You're having an affair." He said it flatly, like he was reading stock prices. "I don't know who he is. I don't care. You'll get the settlement we agreed on and nothing more. Sign the papers, and we can both move on."
I stared at the photograph. At my own face, smiling, relaxed, happy in a way I hadn't been in three years of my marriage
Happy because I had just closed the deal. Because the meeting with West Coast Investors had gone better than I had dreamed. Because for one afternoon, I had forgotten I was Lilian Brooks, forgotten the cold house and the colder husband, and just been... me.
The man in the photograph was Ethan Shaw, head of acquisitions, he had flown in from Singapore. We had lunch to celebrate, he told a joke and I laughed.
That was it
That was it
That was practically it
"You think I'm having an affair?" I whispered.
"I don't think. I know." Sebastian took his phone back, slipped it into his pocket. "Save the theatrics. You're not the first person to cheat in a loveless marriage. You won't be the last. I'm not angry, Lilian, I'm just done."
He turned toward the door.
"Wait." The word tore out of me. "Wait. You can't just Sebastian, you can't just drop this on me and walk away. I deserve"
"You deserve? What do you deserve?" He stopped. Looked back at me over his shoulder. For one second, one heartbeat something flickered in his eyes. Something that looked almost like pain.
Then it was gone.
"You deserve exactly what you signed up for," he said. "The same as me."
He walked out.
The door clicked shut behind him.
I stood in the middle of our living room, divorce papers crumpled in my fist, and listened to the silence swallow everything.
Twenty minutes later, I called my mother.
Lilian Baby, it's almost eleven here, what's happening over there
"He's divorcing me mum" I said
Silence on her end. Then, What did you say?She asked
Sebastian served me divorce papers. Tonight. He thinks I'm having an affair, mum. He had me followed, he said he has evidence, he showed me photographs, he
"Wait, wait, slow down. An affair? With who?"
"Nobody!" I was crying now, tears streaming down my face, my voice cracking on every word. "It was a business lunch. A business lunch with a client, Ethan Shaw from Singapore. We closed a deal, we celebrated, and now my husband thinks I'm"
"Oh, baby Oh, baby, my baby come here. Come home tonight get on a plane and come home."
"I can't, I have to speak to him, I have to let him understand that I wasn't cheating"
"You can, you will, Let me call your father, he'll book the flight. Just pack a bag and get to the airport, we'll figure this out."
I wanted to argue. I wanted to stay and fight, to wait for Sebastian to come back, to make him listen.
But I had spent three years waiting for that man to see me.
I was done waiting.
"Okay," I whispered. "Okay. I'm coming."