“Sign the divorce papers and take that boy with you. I don’t have a son with a mind that small.”
The words left Nathan Whitaker’s mouth as if he were speaking about something useless he wanted removed from the house, not about Caleb, our seven-year-old son, who sat quietly in front of his plate of fruit, sorting the green grapes and purple grapes into exact rows of ten.
The morning my husband offered me $250 million to vanish from his life, he didn’t choose an office, a boardroom, or even wait until Caleb had gone to school.
He did it in the kitchen of our mansion in Beverly Hills, right in front of the little boy who had spent years hoping for one gentle touch from his father and receiving nothing but irritation in return.
Nathan dropped a folder onto the marble counter.
“It’s all there, Olivia. The smaller house in Lake Tahoe, the accounts, the settlement, the trust fund so you can’t claim I abandoned you. Two hundred and fifty million dollars. More than most women could ever imagine walking away with in a divorce.”
I looked at the folder.
Then I looked at Caleb.
My son didn’t cry. He didn’t ask anything. He only moved one grape with the tip of his finger and said softly,
