Dubai had spit me out ahead of schedule after the contract wrapped fast, and for once I hadn’t stopped to think through logistics, timing, or whether Brenda would be annoyed I hadn’t warned her. I just booked the first flight to Chicago and got on it. After four months of heat, glass towers, and long nights babysitting rich men who thought danger was something that only happened to poor people, all I wanted was a shower, real coffee, and to see my son.
Jake was nine years old and at that age where his face still had traces of baby softness but his questions were getting sharper every time I saw him. He liked baseball cards, horror comics he wasn’t supposed to read, and calling me out when I missed a school event because I was working overseas.
“Somebody’s gotta pay child support, Dad,” he’d said with a grin the last time we video-called, trying to sound older than he was.
I had laughed. Brenda had not.
The divorce had been ugly the way only a divorce can be when one person wants out and the other person keeps believing the wreck can still be repaired if he just holds the broken parts hard enough. Brenda wanted a different life, that was the cleanest way to say it. Cleaner than the affair. Cleaner than the lawyer fees. Cleaner than the way she’d stared at our little brick house in Naperville like it was a punishment instead of the place where we brought our son home.
By the time the divorce papers were final, she had new clothes, a new social circle, and a new man named Marcus Hale who wore expensive watches and looked at people like he was measuring what they were worth.
Now she lived in a penthouse downtown.
