Chapter 5
What happened over the following months was, by any measure, satisfying in the way that genuine consequences are satisfying — not loud, not theatrical, just complete.
Claire and I filed for divorce six weeks later. I had retained an attorney during the same three weeks I'd spent gathering evidence, which meant that by the time the papers were filed, I already had documentation establishing the affair's timeline, which mattered considerably in a state where infidelity could affect asset division. Claire did not contest most of it. I think, in the end, she understood that she had forfeited her position to argue about fairness the moment she'd chosen those three weeks of hotel charges over six years of marriage.
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Rebecca Mercer filed for divorce from Ryan four days after the porch confrontation. She also, as HR director, was now in possession of internal expense report fraud spanning multiple personal relationships conducted on the company card — information she was professionally obligated to escalate regardless of her personal feelings about doing so. Ryan was terminated from the firm three weeks later for cause, which followed him into his next two job applications via reference checks that HR directors, it turns out, talk to each other more than people in Ryan's position ever expect them to.
Claire kept her job at the same firm, in a separate department from where Ryan had worked, though she told me much later, in one of the handful of civil conversations we eventually managed to have, that the awkwardness of remaining in that building for another year had been its own quiet punishment she hadn't anticipated.
