The night Ken got the call, his hands shook like the world had shifted beneath him.
He stood in the kitchen, eyes lit up like someone had flipped a switch inside him. I was still in pajamas, holding Quinn’s bedtime book, watching him pace like he was trying to outrun whatever came next.
“There’s a will,” he said, breathless. “Dad left something… big.”
I blinked. “How big?”
“Half a million,” he whispered, eyes wide with wonder, greed, or maybe both. “The lawyer said it’s real.”
He looked at me, but not with love. Not even with recognition. It was the kind of look you give a puzzle piece that doesn’t quite fit where you thought it would.
“Everything’s going to change,” he said.
I smiled, slow and hopeful. “You mean for us?”
For the first time in forever, I let myself daydream—paying off the mortgage, taking that Florence trip we’d talked about in passing. Fixing the car. Starting a college fund for Quinn. Building a life with less holding our breath.
But Ken didn’t answer. He just walked out of the kitchen and out of our marriage, one quiet step at a time.
The next morning, I found divorce papers on the table. No explanation, no argument. Just his signature and a pen, left like punctuation on a sentence I didn’t know we were writing.
“I need to find myself,” he said, sipping coffee without meeting my eyes. “I’ve wasted too many years in this… life.”
Our marriage—reduced to something he needed to escape.
Ten years, packed up and pushed away like clutter.
He moved into his father’s estate. Didn’t ask for much. No custody fight, no property battle. Just a clean cut. Too clean. It felt like he already had what he wanted and didn’t need the rest of us anymore.
I kept the routines. I read bedtime stories to Quinn with a steady voice and a breaking heart. I made lunches. I kissed scraped knees. I swallowed my hurt because a six-year-old doesn’t need to carry her mother’s grief.
And then came the call.
It was an unfamiliar number. I almost didn’t answer.
“Wren?” the man asked, warm and professional. “This is Peter. Richard’s lawyer.”
I froze.
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