Chapter 2

The promotion. It was unexpected.

A senior analyst position at the Ashworth-owned firm.

More money, more responsibility, same gilded cage, just a bit bigger.

My colleagues, mostly younger guys, insisted on celebrating.

A few beers, a steak dinner. It felt almost normal.

I hadn' t done that in years.

I called Jessica. "I'll be late. Work dinner."

"Fine," she said, her voice distant, already halfway to somewhere else. "Don't wake Sophie."

It was past midnight when I pulled into the driveway of our upscale suburban house.

The house the Ashworths owned, the house I managed.

I fumbled for my keys, then the keypad for the security system.

Code rejected.

I tried again. Rejected.

A chill that had nothing to do with the night air crept up my spine.

I pressed the doorbell.

Lights were on upstairs. Sophie' s room.

I saw her shadow at the window.

"Sophie?" I called out, not too loud. "It's Michael. Can you let me in?"

The shadow moved, then disappeared.

Nothing.

I rang again. Waited.

Silence.

She knew I was out here.

Jessica must have changed the codes. And told Sophie not to open the door.

Why?

The humiliation was a cold, hard knot in my stomach.

Locked out of the house I ran, by the child I raised.

At the instruction of the wife who barely acknowledged my existence.

I walked back to my car, the one in my name but funded by Ashworth money.

The leather seats felt cold.

I spent the night in the driveway, staring at the house that was never truly mine.

The gratitude had finally, definitively, soured.