She looked diminished—not ill, but pared down. Her hair was pulled into a messy bun. She wore yoga pants and a hoodie, the uniform of someone who'd given up on presentation. The defiant fire was gone, replaced by a desperate, hollow exhaustion.
I stopped, five feet between us. "Sarah."
"You look different," she said, her voice raspy. It was supposed to be an opening, a compliment; it just felt like an observation.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"I want to talk. Please, just for five minutes. You won't answer my calls, my emails..."
"My lawyer's information hasn't changed."
"Damn it, James! I'm not a client. I'm your wife!" Her voice cracked on the word, rising enough that the concierge, Leo, glanced over discreetly.
"You stopped being my wife the moment you decided to be Mark's mistress," I said, not unkindly, just factually. "The paperwork is a formality."
Tears welled in her eyes—real ones this time. The anger bled out, leaving pure, wretched need. "I was lost. I was stupid and insecure, and he flattered me. It was a fantasy. It meant nothing! You're my reality. You're my husband. I love you. I never stopped."
It was the performance of a lifetime. And for a nanosecond, the old neural pathways lit up: the instinct to comfort, to fix. I let the impulse rise and die unacted upon.
"You have a strange way of showing love," I said. "You didn't confess to come clean. You confessed to hurt me, to prove you had power. You wanted to see me break."
She shook her head violently. "No, that's not true!"
"It is," I said, my voice still calm. "And when I didn't break, you panicked. Now you're here, not because you love me, but because the fantasy collapsed, and you have nowhere else to go. Mark's gone, isn't he?"