Chapter 3 - The Broken Pedestal
When I stepped out onto the porch ten minutes later, the autumn wind carried a sharp, icy bite. I didn't cross the street. I stood at the top of the concrete steps with my arms crossed over my wool sweater, waiting.
The Porsche’s door swung open.
Preston stepped out, and for a moment, I could barely recognize the man I had lived with for twelve years. His tailored suit was severely wrinkled, his white shirt was unbuttoned at the neck without a tie, and dark, purple hollows hung beneath his bloodshot eyes. He looked as if he hadn't slept or shaved in three days. As he crossed the pavement toward me, his gait was unsteady, hesitant, stripped of the booming stride that used to announce his arrival anywhere.
He stopped at the foot of the porch stairs, looking up at me through the cold morning air.
"Nora," he rasped, his voice raw and cracking.
"You're violating the terms of the decree, Preston," I said, my voice level, void of any inflection. "Visitations are scheduled through Danielle’s portal. You aren't supposed to be here."
"I know," he whispered, running a trembling hand through his messy hair. "I know, Nora. I just... I didn't know where else to go."
The sheer audacity of the statement almost made me laugh out loud. "Where else to go? You have a twelve-thousand-square-foot mansion in the Callaway compound. You have your parents. You have the private club where you spent every weekend telling your friends that I was holding your career back."
Preston flinched as if I had slapped him across the mouth. "The mansion is surrounded by federal investigators. They froze the holding company accounts this morning. My father won't look at me. He told me to pack a bag and get out of the house until the forensic audit is finished."
"And your mother?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. "The woman who sent me a picture of balloons yesterday afternoon to remind me that God was replacing me with an heir?"
Preston dropped his head, staring down at his scuffed leather shoes. Tears pooled in his eyes, spilling over his stubbled cheeks. "She’s locked in her bedroom with a private physician. She won't speak to anyone. The news leaked to the club members, Nora. Everyone knows. Every single person in the city knows that I was played like a complete fool."
"That's what's killing you, isn't it?" I asked, taking one slow step down the stairs. "Not that you abandoned your wife. Not that you stood up in a courtroom while our daughter’s custody was being finalized so you could rush off to another woman. What's destroying you is that your vanity was exposed to people whose opinions don't even matter."
"Nora, please," he sobbed, taking a desperate step forward, his hands reaching out in an instinctive plea. "She took everything. She forged my initials on secondary transfer authorizations. Over four million dollars is gone. The FBI says she’s probably already on a private charter out of the Caribbean. And the baby..."
He choked on the word, his chest heaving with ugly, shuddering breaths.
"What about the baby, Preston?"
"It's a little boy," he whispered, covering his face with both hands as he began to weep openly on the suburban sidewalk. "They tested his blood twice. He has a rare enzymatic marker. He couldn't possibly be mine. He belongs to some man in Europe or South America, or maybe nobody at all. The hospital told me that if someone doesn't claim him or sign temporary guardianship papers by five o'clock today, he goes into state custody as an abandoned infant."
I stood on the bottom step, looking down at this broken shell of a man. The anger that had fueled my survival for eight months didn't flare up; instead, a vast, hollow quiet settled over me.
"Why are you telling me this, Preston?"
He looked up at me with eyes full of pathetic, childish desperation. "My father wants me to sign the abandonment release. He says having a nameless, fraudulent child tied to our family records will ruin what's left of our stock valuation. But I... Nora, I held him for ten minutes before the lab report came back. He didn't ask for any of this. I can't just throw him away into the system."
I looked at him, truly seeing him for the first time in years. The golden boy of the Callaway dynasty had spent his whole life being told that image was everything. Now that the mirror had shattered into a thousand jagged pieces, he was bleeding out on my doorstep.
"Go to the hospital, Preston," I said quietly.
He blinked through his tears. "What?"
May you like
"Go to the hospital. Do the only decent thing you have ever done in your entire life. Go sit in that room until you figure out what an innocent child deserves, instead of crying on my lawn about your reputation."
***
