The rain began just as Richard stepped out of the solicitor's office — a thin, chilly drizzle that clung to the air like a held breath. London was grey in that particular early-spring way: muted, heavy, entirely indifferent to anyone's private heartbreak.
It was done.
He stood on the pavement for a moment that felt oddly suspended, the signed papers still warm inside the envelope tucked beneath his arm. Eighteen years of marriage, reduced to a few signatures and a polite handshake.
No shouting.
No courtroom theatrics.
No dramatic last-minute confession.
Just… endings. Quiet ones.
Richard exhaled. The breath left him in a thin cloud, dissolving into the damp air. He didn't feel anger anymore. That had burnt itself out months ago, leaving behind something gentler — a tired acceptance that settled only after every last hope had already given way.
He thought of Chloe and Drew: their bewildered faces, the way Drew drifted silently in his orbit these last weeks, Chloe's brittle quiet whenever Eleanor's name came up. He would go home to them tonight. He owed them that. He had missed so much already. He needed to promise them that things would be all right.
He hoped one day that would be true.
A car rolled through a puddle, sending a scatter of water across the pavement. The city swelled and shifted around him: umbrellas tilting, footsteps hurrying, distant sirens slicing through the damp. Life moving on — while he stood still, a man abruptly without anchor.
If someone had told him twenty years ago that this was where he would end up, he would have laughed.
He had loved her once.
Really loved her.
Loved her enough to build a whole future around her, to swallow every warning sign, to believe that the beginning was prophecy rather than just a moment.
A gust of wind brushed past him, cold and insistent — and with it came a memory so sharp he nearly stepped backward.
Twenty-two years earlier
He had seen her across a crowded room dripping with champagne and soft lighting — Eleanor Bennett in green silk, laughing like she owned gravity. He was twenty-eight, newly promoted, awkward in a borrowed suit, all sharp corners and quiet ambition.
She turned toward him, tossed her blonde hair back, and smiled. He remembered that smile — the way it made him feel briefly, foolishly chosen.
For years afterward, that night became the compass he returned to whenever he questioned their marriage.
The first spark.
The proof that he hadn't imagined the connection.
He'd never forgotten how she brushed a lock of hair behind her ear as she asked what he did, how she laughed at his dry jokes, how beautiful she looked beneath the warm glow of that hotel ballroom. She took his hand later that evening, and the shock of that simple touch had felt like possibility breaking open.
It never occurred to him that the future could unravel quietly, not in some dramatic explosion but in tiny, hairline fractures — unnoticed at first, widening over time.
He wondered when he stopped seeing her clearly. When she stopped seeing him. When they had both begun drifting, two boats tied to different shores.
Perhaps the beginning had been the best of them.
Perhaps that was alright.
Perhaps not every love survived its own evolution.
The memory faded. Rain pattered softly against the pavement, anchoring him back in the present.
He looked down at the envelope — the official seal, the stark lettering, the single uncompromising word at the top:
Final.
He slipped it into his briefcase, straightened his coat, and walked toward the row of idling taxis. The city swallowed him effortlessly, and he let it.
A new thought settled in him — quiet but steady.
He wasn't walking away from something anymore.
He was walking toward whatever came next.
His house was quiet when he returned — not empty, just still, as though waiting. Chloe and Drew were already home, shoes abandoned in the hallway, school bags dropped beside the sofa in adolescent impatience.
Chloe sat cross-legged at the coffee table, university prospectuses spread around her like a bright paper halo. Drew lingered near the fridge, pretending to look for food, really just avoiding conversation the way he often did when something weighed heavily on him.
Richard paused, taking them in.
They seemed older. Not in years, but in the kind of gravity children shouldn't have to carry. He supposed divorce did that.
"Hey, you two," he said gently.
Chloe glanced up immediately, scanning his expression the way she always had — reading weather. Drew gave him a small nod, shoulders tight, eyes down.
"It's official," Richard said quietly. "The papers are signed."
Chloe set her prospectus aside.
Drew's fingers curled around the fridge handle.
Silence, soft but heavy.
Then Chloe stood, crossing the room with a steadiness that made her look suddenly twenty seven instead of seventeen.
"Dad… Drew and I have been talking." Her voice wavered only once. "We want to stay here. With you."
Drew nodded hard, gaze still fixed on the floor. "Mum doesn't even notice when we're home," he whispered. "It's like we're… furniture she didn't pick."
Richard's chest tightened.
He hadn't expected this — though a part of him had hoped. Hearing it now, only hours after the marriage officially ended, struck something raw inside him.
"You don't have to decide tonight," he began gently. "It's been a hard few months, and emotions are —"
"Dad."
Chloe's voice steadied. "We're deciding. You listen to us. You actually care how we are. Mum just… cares what people think."
Drew wiped at his eyes with his sleeve, frustrated with himself. "She gets bored of us," he murmured. "I don't want to feel like I'm in the way anymore."
The words hit him with devastating clarity.
He had failed them too — not out of cruelty, but neglect. Quiet, unintentional, corrosive neglect. Too many nights at the office. Too many excuses. Too much faith that if he was unhappy, that was his burden alone.
He didn't see the loneliness growing inside his children.
He reached for them, pulling them into his arms. Chloe clung to him immediately. Drew resisted for half a moment before folding against his chest, small tremors running through him.
"I'm sorry," Richard said, voice low and unsteady. "I should have seen. I should have been here."
Chloe shook her head. "You're here now."
And Drew whispered, "That's what matters."
Richard closed his eyes, holding them closer.
Comfort unfurled inside him — warm, grounding — but threaded through it was despair like a thin seam.
How had he missed this?
How had he let the temperature of his home drop so gradually that none of them noticed until they were freezing?
Not anymore.
Never again.
He pressed a kiss to Chloe's hair, squeezed Drew's shoulder, and made a promise silently:
Nothing will eclipse you again. Not work. Not duty. Not distraction.
When they finally pulled apart, Chloe sniffed and drew herself up with a shaky attempt at brightness. "So… pizza?"
Drew nodded. "Extra cheese."
A small laugh escaped Richard — the first honest one in weeks. "Pizza it is."
As he reached for his phone, something soft and startling settled in him.
For the first time in months — maybe years — the house felt like home.