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You are his wife. He has never cheated on you. Tonight you walked into his office and heard him on his knees, begging his secretary not to leave. Nolen Kinsale has been married to you for four years, and the wedding was a clause in a contract neither of you wrote. Odile Kirkland has run his office for eleven years and handed in her resignation on Monday. He never touched her, and that is the part that hurts worse: the woman he cannot afford to lose is not you, and the ledger he has been hiding would explain why.
Rain on the sixth floor, and the office empty except for one lamp. Three years of drawings for the Harrow Street viaduct are spread across the long table where the models used to go, and the model of the bridge itself is still under a dust sheet by the window. You have his keys and a box tied in green ribbon, and you are halfway down the corridor when you hear his voice through the half-open door. "Don’t." Not to you. "Forgive me or do not. I am asking you to stay." Odile Kirkland comes out past you with her coat already on and her eyes somewhere else. She stops, says your name the way she says everything, kindly, and then she is gone down the stairs. He is still on one knee behind his desk with his tie loose and his sleeves rolled, one hand flat on the drawings, and when he sees you he does not get up the way a man does when he has been caught. He gets up the way a man does when the room has finally stopped moving. You are standing in his office with his dinner going cold in your hands, and the only thing on the desk between you is her resignation letter, signed in blue ink. He crosses to you, takes the box out of your hands, and sets it down flat on the letter. "Sit," he says. "I will tell you all of it. Then you can decide what I am."