Chapter 7 - The Journey Back
The snow began falling early on the morning of December twelfth, blanketing southern Wisconsin in a thick, crystalline hush.
Thomas left Chicago before noon, making up an excuse to Camille about an emergency meeting with an institutional client in Rockford. Camille hadn't even looked up from her tablet to question him. Over the last two months, their apartment had become a battleground of passive-aggressive snipes, separate bedrooms, and mutual contempt. The "fire" Thomas had sacrificed his family for was nothing more than a trash fire burning through his self-respect.
As his luxury sedan crossed the state line into Wisconsin, his hands were trembling against the leather steering wheel. The highway was familiar, yet every mile marker felt like a step backward through a life he had dismantled with his own hands.
He drove past the exit for their old neighborhood outside Madison. For a split second, he considered turning off, driving down the winding street to look at the house where his children had grown up. But he knew strangers lived there now. Strangers who had repainted the front porch, pruned the maple tree, and placed their own furniture where his life used to be.
He checked into a downtown hotel near the Capitol square at four in the afternoon.
He stood before the bathroom mirror, obsessively adjusting his tie. He was fifty years old, but looking into the glass, he saw the lines of exhaustion deeply etched around his eyes and mouth. The weight he had lost wasn't muscle; it was the hollow fatigue of regret.
"She loved you for twenty-two years," he whispered to his reflection, trying to summon the confidence that had once carried him through boardroom negotiations. "Twenty-two years don't just disappear in six months. She’ll understand."
At six-thirty, he walked through the swirling snow down toward Lake Monona.
The Riverbend Contemporary was glowing from within, its floor-to-ceiling glass windows casting warm, golden light across the snowbanks. Through the glass, Thomas could see dozens of elegantly dressed patrons holding champagne flutes, moving between towering canvases bathed in directional spotlights.
He stepped through the heavy glass doors, the chime of the brass bell muffled by the hum of sophisticated conversation and the low, resonant notes of a live cello ensemble playing in the corner.
May you like
Thomas took off his overcoat, handed it to the attendant, and turned toward the center of the gallery.
And there she was.
