Chapter 2
I pictured Clara in our penthouse.
She would be in the nursery.
Hair tied up.
Bare feet.
Probably wearing the old gray sweater she had stolen from me years ago, before we had penthouses and magazine profiles and private drivers. Before people recognized me in restaurants. Before my company employed hundreds of people. Before we began confusing wealth with safety.
I knew exactly how she would be holding Noah.
One hand supporting the back of his head.
The other rubbing small circles over his back.
She had learned every sound he made.
There was the hungry cry.
The overtired cry.
The angry little complaint he made during diaper changes.
The weak, broken whimper that frightened her enough to call the pediatrician even when everyone told her she was worrying too much.
I knew those things because Clara told me.
Not because I had learned them myself.
“He’s got Clara,” I said.
The sentence sounded reasonable enough that I let myself believe it.
Sabrina picked up her glass.
“And Clara has doctors.”
Another buzz.
I flipped my phone face down.
The little slap of glass against marble seemed louder than the storm.
Sabrina smiled.
“To freedom.”
I should have left.
There are moments in life that become doors only after they close.
I should have picked up my coat.
I should have called my driver.
I should have run barefoot through the rain if necessary.
I should have gone home and taken my son from Clara’s exhausted arms.
I should have sat beside the crib until sunrise.
I should have let my wife sleep.
I should have remembered that love was not the exciting part of a life.
Love was the part that asked you to come home.
Instead, I raised my glass.
“To freedom.”
By morning, freedom had emptied my house.
I left the hotel at 6:17.
The exact time stayed with me because later I looked at the receipt from the car service and hated the numbers.
6:17 a.m.
My tie was loose.
My shirt was wrinkled.
My head felt thick from champagne and lack of sleep.
London had been washed pale overnight. Water ran along the curb. Buildings rose out of the gray morning like monuments to people who had already died.
My driver, Malcolm, opened the rear door without looking directly at me.
Men in my position paid people to pretend they noticed nothing.
For years, I had mistaken that for privacy.