Then I ask three questions so specific, so surgically informed by Margaret’s files and my own preparation, that silence drops over the table like a curtain.
After that, nobody calls me decorative again.
The CFO does blink.
I replace him.
It makes headlines for twenty-four hours and changes the internal temperature of the company for much longer.
Meanwhile the divorce accelerates. Ethan’s legal team negotiates harder over optics than over substance, which tells Elise everything she needs to know. Lauren keeps a lower profile now, though once a photographer catches Ethan entering her building at dawn and the resulting images dissolve whatever remained of his public deniability.
Through it all, the baby becomes the saddest constant.
Not because he is unloved, perhaps he is loved in flashes, in guilty tenderness, in frightened clutching, in whatever pieces selfish adults call love when consequences finally arrive. But because I can see already how his existence will be fought over, framed, narrated, used.
So I do the one thing Margaret would approve.
I leave the child untouched by the war.