Sometime after four I remembered Clare saying James had dreams, and I whispered into the dark, "So did I." No one heard me. That might have been the loneliest part of the whole night.
The next morning I called Marcus before the sun came up. He was my foreman and my oldest friend, the one who'd known me when the company was a single truck with rust around its wheel wells. He answered on the second ring, already awake, and asked whether the mower parts had arrived. When I told him I wasn't coming in, he stopped talking about work. I don't take days off without a reason, and he knew that better than anybody.
"You sick?" he asked.
"Clare moved out last night."
He was silent for so long I checked whether the call had dropped. Then he said, "I'll be there in forty minutes," and hung up before I could tell him he didn't need to come. That was Marcus. Some people make big speeches about friendship; he shows up with a second coffee and figures out what needs doing. When his truck pulled into the driveway, I had managed to wash my face and put on a clean shirt, but I still looked like I'd spent the night arguing with ghosts.
He came through the door carrying two paper cups and a bag of breakfast sandwiches. He didn't make a joke, didn't ask whether I wanted company, just set everything on the table and waited. I told him about James, the hotel penthouse, the wine bar, and the five months. I told him Clare had said the business was all fuel receipts and lawn contracts. He looked at his hands while I spoke, the way he did when he was angry and trying not to make things worse.
"Eleven guys have health insurance because of those lawn contracts," he finally said. "Your business bought three families groceries when that storm shut down half the county last year. Don't let somebody who's leaving rewrite what you've built."
I thanked him, though the words didn't reach very far inside me. We ate without much appetite. Then I told him about the booster seat in the Range Rover, and he put his sandwich down slowly. He asked whether Clare had mentioned a child, and I said no. For the first time since he'd arrived, he looked genuinely puzzled rather than simply furious.
"A man supposedly opening a wine bar has time to collect somebody else's wife at nine on a Thursday," he said. "Maybe. But there's something strange about a man who tells her to get divorced fast while he's driving around with children's things in the back."
"Maybe he has kids. That alone doesn't prove anything."
"No, it doesn't. And you don't need to prove anything today. You need a lawyer."