She carried the suitcase to the guest room without taking the souvenir glass from the counter. I washed my own water glass, let Biscuit outside, and switched off the kitchen lights. Through the wall I could hear Celeste talking on the phone, sometimes crying and sometimes speaking so sharply that I couldn't make out the words. I didn't listen at the door. I went to bed and stared at the ceiling until the sky began to lighten.
At some point near dawn, Biscuit nudged open my door and curled up on the rug beside the bed. I reached down and scratched his ears. There was no excitement, no sense of victory, and certainly no satisfaction in the fact that I had answered Celeste's ultimatum exactly as she'd framed it. There was just grief and the quiet awareness that I'd survived the first conversation without turning it into the kind of fight we had spent years rehearsing. The next morning, consequences would begin arriving from places neither of us could control.
Monday morning arrived under a sky the color of wet concrete. I was already dressed when Celeste came out of the guest room, carrying her phone and a small overnight bag. Her eyes were swollen, and she had tied her hair back with an elastic band as if she were preparing for an ordinary day at work. She asked whether I would tell Diane to stop the proceedings if she agreed to counseling. I said I had spent months asking us to seek help and that I wasn't prepared to reverse the decision because the consequences had become visible.
She looked toward the dog bowl. "What about Biscuit?" she asked. I told her I wanted us to agree on a caring arrangement, but I wasn't using him as a bargaining tool. She said he had always been her dog. I reminded her gently that we had adopted him together, then offered to make sure she could see him while we worked things out. She didn't answer that offer, and the conversation ended with the painful awkwardness of two people discovering that nearly every object in their home now required a decision.
I went to work before she left. In the van, I sat for several minutes looking at the apartment windows and trying to understand how a place could contain so many ordinary memories and still feel unfamiliar. Luis called to ask whether I had picked up a replacement fan assembly, and the question pulled me back into the world of practical responsibilities. I had the part in the van. A customer was waiting, a service ticket needed closing, and the day would proceed whether I felt ready or not.
At nine that morning, Natalie submitted the documents she had assembled to Westbridge's compliance office and requested confirmation that they would be reviewed independently. I learned this from her later, not because I had access to the company's records. She said she'd included the relevant expense reports, the resort documents, and the questionable spa charge, together with an explanation of how she obtained the copies. She hadn't asked the company to punish anyone on the strength of her marriage problems. She had asked its reviewers to examine whether corporate money had been used for personal travel.