Chapter 6: The Last Room
I came downstairs with the document box under one arm and my phone in my pocket.
The house was almost unrecognizable.
The crew had done their job thoroughly.
The living room was bare down to the floor.
The kitchen still had its appliances — they would need a separate equipment team for the Sub-Zero, the supervisor had explained — but the counters were cleared, the small appliances gone, the walls stripped of the herb prints I had framed during our first spring together.
Evan was standing in the middle of the empty living room.
He looked smaller in it somehow.
The furniture had always defined the space — filled it, warmed it, made it feel like the kind of home you showed off at dinner parties.
Without it, the brownstone showed its bones.
High ceilings.
Original crown molding.
Good bones, but empty.
Just like his.
His father was still there.
Gerald sat on the bottom stair, out of the way of the movers, watching his son with an expression that hadn't changed in the last hour.
Linda was not in the room.
"Where's your mother?" I asked.
Evan turned.
"She went to lie down.
She has a headache."
"She can keep the aspirin," I said.
"That's hers."
He didn't smile.
"We need to talk about the account," he said.
My whole body went still on the inside.
On the outside, I set the document box down on the kitchen counter and opened it.
"Which account?" I asked.
"The household fund." He watched my face.
"I've been meaning to talk to you about that for a while."
"Have you?"
"There were some withdrawals I should have mentioned.
Some expenses that came up and I didn't—" He stopped.
"I handled it wrong.
I know that."
I sorted through the papers in the box without looking at him.
"How wrong?" I asked.
"I can explain every transaction." His voice had the particular quality it got when he was constructing something — careful, just-ahead-of-the-question.
"Some of it was for the house.
The HVAC work last winter—"
"I paid for the HVAC work," I said.
"I have the receipt."
A beat.
"Some of it was for other things," he said.
"Things I'm not proud of.
But I can pay it back.
All of it.
That's what I'm saying.
We don't need to—" He gestured at the empty room.
"It doesn't have to go this far."
I closed the document box.
"Ma'am." The crew supervisor appeared in the kitchen doorway.
"We're ready to load the last of it.
You're coming to the address on file?"
My colleague Priya had offered her spare room the moment I'd texted her from upstairs.
She hadn't asked a single question.
She had just sent back a thumbs-up and said the key was under the mat.
"Yes," I said.
"I'll follow you over."
Evan stepped toward me.
"Natalie, stop.
Please.
Just — stop for one minute and talk to me."
"I talked to you for four years," I said.
"I'm done talking."
"One conversation.
Tomorrow morning.
Sober, calm, just the two of us.
Give me that."
I picked up the document box.
"You'll hear from Susan Hale's office tomorrow morning," I said.
"That's the conversation you're getting."
His face changed.
The construction fell apart.
"You called a lawyer."
"I called a lawyer."
"Tonight."
"Tonight."
He looked at his father.
Gerald looked back at him without expression.
"You can't do this," Evan said.
It came out quietly, almost to himself.
"Not like this.
Not over one night."
"It wasn't one night." I walked toward the front door, where one of the movers was holding it open.
"You know that better than anyone."
I stepped out onto the front steps.
The two trucks were loaded and waiting, their running lights on in the dark.
The street was quiet.
A neighbor's porch light was on across the road.
The night air was cooler than it had been inside the house.
Behind me, the front door stayed open.
Then Evan appeared in the doorway.
"I'll fight the divorce," he said.
"You should know that.
I'll fight it."
I turned to look at him one last time standing in the empty doorway of the empty house.
"Evan," I said.
"You don't have a dining table.
You don't have a couch.
You don't have a refrigerator." I picked up my bag.
"Fight it from the floor."
I got into my car.
May you like
The trucks pulled out first.
I followed them into the dark.
