Chapter 5 - The Toll of the Ledger
The kitchen was warm, smelling of roasted garlic, fresh rosemary, and the sharp, clean scent of bleach from the prep stations. Colby was leaning against the stainless-steel prep table, watching the swinging doors with a mixture of amusement and lingering tension.
"Well?" Colby asked as I walked in, grabbing a clean towel to wipe my hands. "Is she calling her banker, her lawyer, or her ghostwriter?"
"She's calling nobody," I said quietly, leaning against the counter next to him. "She's sitting out there trying to figure out which of her thirty-eight 'best friends' is wealthy enough to bail her out without asking too many embarrassing questions."
Colby let out a sharp whistle, shaking his head. "Twenty-six grand. God. Part of me almost feels sorry for her. Almost."
"Don't," I said, though my voice lacked its earlier edge. The adrenaline was beginning to fade, leaving behind a dull, heavy exhaustion in my bones. Eight years of marriage, eight years of quiet humiliation, of biting my tongue to keep the peace, of watching my own hard-earned success treated like a family piggy bank—it didn't vanish just because I had finally dropped the hammer. It just felt heavier.
"So," Colby said, shifting gears as he checked the digital ticket monitor above our heads. "The dinner rush is going to hit in about thirty minutes. Are we comping her table's leftovers, or are we feeding them to the stray dogs behind the alley?"
"Box them up and put them in the breakroom for the dishwashers," I said with a faint, tired smile. "They actually earned their pay today."
Just as Colby turned back toward the line, the heavy glass front door of the restaurant chimed.
I looked through the small glass window of the kitchen doors.
It wasn't Nadine.
Standing in the entryway, looking pale, disheveled, and drenched in a sudden autumn rainstorm that had just started rolling down the mountain, was Bryce. He wasn't wearing his usual tailored executive suit; he was wearing a wrinkled grey hoodie, his hair plastered to his forehead, holding a damp leather duffel bag in his right hand.
He didn't look like a senior partner at a prestigious financial firm. He looked like a hunted animal that had finally run out of forest.
May you like
My hand froze on the edge of the prep table.
Through the glass, I watched as Bryce scanned the empty dining room, his eyes frantic, before locking onto the corner table where his mother was still sitting alone in the dark. He didn't see me standing in the kitchen doorway yet. But as Nadine slowly raised her head and looked at her son with eyes full of a terror I had never seen on her face before, Bryce reached into his hoodie pocket, pulled out a small, heavy-duty manila envelope, and dropped it onto the table between them—before turning his head slowly toward the kitchen doors, as if he could feel my eyes burning straight through the glass.
