Chapter 11 - The Week After the Fall
Blackwood Restoration did not explode.
It shrank.
That was somehow sadder.
By Monday, the company entered a formal workout with creditors.
Twelve employees were laid off immediately.
Twenty more were put on reduced hours.
Two active renovation contracts transferred to another firm willing to keep the project teams.
The office coffee subscription stopped.
The receptionist desk disappeared because Jada moved to a client-service role and started working from home three days a week.
There was no single dramatic moment where everyone punished Adrian.
There were just consequences.
Luis took a job in Milwaukee and left without saying goodbye.
Mara found temporary payroll work through an old client and kept her husband's insurance through COBRA.
Nate spent three days blaming himself, then accepted a finance role at a construction supplier.
Celeste moved out of Adrian's house and into a furnished rental two blocks from the lake.
Elise stayed at Alder House.
And I went back to my condo.
The one Adrian had called my emergency exit.
The first night, I discovered the freezer still contained a bag of dumplings that had expired eleven months earlier.
I ate cereal for dinner instead.
At 1:14 a.m., Adrian texted.
CAN WE TALK?
I stared at the message for five minutes.
Then put the phone facedown.
At 1:22, another message.
I'M SORRY.
At 1:31.
I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THIS WITHOUT YOU.
That was the one that almost got me.
Not because it was romantic.
Because I'd spent three years taking that sentence as a compliment.
I didn't know how to do this without you.
It had sounded like love.
Now I heard labor.
The next morning Elise called.
"Can you come up here?"
"Is something wrong?"
"No. That's why I'm asking."
I drove to Alder House after lunch.
She was in the garden cutting dead hydrangea heads with rusted shears.
"You know it's November," I said.
"Plants don't read calendars."
She handed me gloves.
We worked for twenty minutes without talking.
It was strange and good.
Then she said, "I'm selling."
I stopped.
"The house?"
"Yes."
"To the developer?"
"No. Preservation group. Lower price. They'll keep the exterior and convert the carriage house into offices."
"Are you sure?"
She looked at the building.
"No."
That made me smile.
"But I don't want keeping it to become another way Adrian decides what my life looks like. If I keep it only because he tried to take it, he still gets a vote."
I thought about the ring in a sealed evidence envelope with my attorney.
The real ring.
Elise's ring.
"What do you want to do with the diamond?" I asked.
She clipped another dead bloom.
"I don't know."
"You don't want it back?"
"I wore it through six years of marriage. Then you wore it through three years of engagement. Maybe it needs a vacation."
I laughed.
"That poor diamond."
"Exhausted."
We went inside for soup.
Halfway through lunch, my phone rang.
Adrian.
I declined it.
Elise raised an eyebrow.
"You can answer if you want."
"I don't."
"That's different from being afraid to."
I looked at her.
She shrugged.
"I learned that late."
My phone buzzed with voicemail.
This time, for reasons I couldn't explain, I listened.
Adrian's voice was quiet.
"Evelyn, I found something in the house that belongs to you. Not the ring. Not paperwork. Something else. I think you should decide whether you want it before I move out."
I almost deleted it.
Then he added one sentence.
"It's in the drawer where you kept the wedding invitations."
My stomach tightened.
Because I knew exactly what was in that drawer.
Nothing.
May you like
At least, there shouldn't have been.
