He had already threatened to sell the car.
“I was angry,” he said.
“People say things.”
“And sometimes they put those things in writing,” Eleanor answered.
Chloe retrieved her overnight bag.
Richard blocked her path.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“You wanted this.”
“I wanted a relationship with the man you claimed to be.”
His voice dropped.
“You said I deserved this house.”
Chloe glanced at Eleanor.
“Apparently, it was never yours to give me.”
She walked around him.
At the doorway, she stopped and faced Eleanor.
“I am not going to pretend I did not know he was married.
I did.
But he told me you contributed nothing and that the estate was effectively his.”
Eleanor’s expression did not soften.
“You saw my suitcase.
You still walked inside.”
Chloe lowered her eyes and left.
Richard watched the front door close behind her.
His imagined future—Chloe on his arm at firm events, clients drinking beneath Eleanor’s chandelier, photographs from the terrace overlooking Lake Michigan—collapsed without ceremony.
He turned toward Eleanor with a new strategy.
“We should talk privately.”
“We had that opportunity in the kitchen.”
“I was emotional.
Chloe manipulated me.”
“You called me dead weight before Chloe ever arrived.”
“I made a mistake.”
“You made a plan.
You emailed the company.
You told another woman she was moving in.
You ordered movers to dispose of my belongings.
Then you stood outside to watch me leave.”
Each sentence stripped away one of his excuses.
Richard loosened his tie.
“What do you want? Money? An apology? I can fix this.”
Eleanor looked around the home she had inherited when she was twenty-seven.
She remembered arriving there with Richard during the worst year of his life, when debt notices covered the table in their Evanston apartment and he woke at night terrified he would fail.
She had never told him the full extent of what she owned because she wanted their marriage to rest on something other than inheritance.
At first, his ignorance had felt protective.
Later, when status began to consume him, it became a test she kept hoping he would stop failing.
She had watched him transform every kindness into evidence of his superiority.
The house became his achievement because he paid part of its expenses.
Her quiet became incompetence because she did not advertise her work.
Her plain clothes became poverty because they did not impress strangers.
Even the Cartier bracelet he bought her had not been a gift.
It had been a costume he wanted her to wear.
“I want exactly what you requested,” Eleanor said.
“A divorce.”
Richard’s confidence faltered.
“You cannot decide that in one night.”
“You did.”
