Chapter 19 - The Empty House
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Richard stood frozen on Park Avenue, the dial tone buzzing in his ear like a flatline.
He had lost his company. He had lost his fortune. He had lost his second family.
Driven by sheer, blind desperation, he hailed a cab with the last fifty dollars in his wallet, directing the driver to our Upper East Side brownstone. He convinced himself that if he could just get inside, if he could just talk to me, he could manipulate his way out of the wreckage. I had always been soft. I had always forgiven him.
He rushed up the front steps, fumbling with his keys. The heavy oak door swung open.
“Victoria!” Richard shouted, stepping into the foyer.
The house was completely, devastatingly silent.
He ran into the living room, then the kitchen, and finally up the stairs to the master bedroom. The closets were half-empty. My clothes, my jewelry, and my personal documents were gone.
He stumbled into Stella’s room. Her toys were packed away, her bed stripped of its colorful sheets. The life we had built within these walls had been systematically, meticulously erased.
Richard fell to his knees in the center of the master bedroom, the crushing weight of his absolute ruin finally collapsing his lungs. He was a king left with an empty, silent castle.
He crawled toward his nightstand, desperate for anything, any clue as to where I had gone.
Resting perfectly in the center of the polished wood was a single, manila folder.
Richard opened it with shaking hands.
Inside was the printed receipt for the quarter-million-dollar custom engagement ring he had bought for Evelyn. Sitting directly on top of the receipt was a crooked, brightly colored object made of construction paper and blue yarn.
It was the paper necklace Stella had made for him. The necklace he had ignored in the lobby to protect his lies.
Tucked beneath the blue yarn was a small, handwritten note in my elegant script.
May you like
You spent six years building two castles, Richard. I hope you enjoy the rubble. - Victoria.
Richard crushed the note in his fist, letting out a raw, agonizing scream that echoed through the empty brownstone, with absolutely no one left to hear it.
