The Man Who Never Looked Away novel Chapter 301

Garnett Harper pushed open the door to the Arden Estate. The entryway light was broken. He changed his shoes in the dark, walked into the living room, and sat down.

The curtains were drawn, and the city lights bled through the gap, slashing a thin, pale line across the hardwood floor.

"You're back?"

"Was the traffic bad?"

"Dinner's almost ready."

She used to talk so much. The moment he walked through the door, she would hover around him, chattering endlessly.

Maybe being cooped up in the house alone made her desperate for conversation. Every trivial little thing grabbed her attention.

The stray cat downstairs came back again, and the neighborhood kids built it a cardboard bed. The roses on the balcony had budded, and one was starting to split open; it would probably bloom tomorrow. Groceries went up a few cents today, and the lady at the market said the farms got flooded from the storm...

Her words were always scattered and rapid, saving up a whole day's worth of thoughts just waiting for him to come home so she could pour them out.

He would lean back on the sofa, eyes glued to the TV, offering half-hearted responses. "Yeah." "Oh."

Eventually, he lost his patience. "Can you give it a rest? I don't care."

After that, she stopped talking.

But she still left dinner out. Whether he came home to eat or not, there was always something warm waiting for him.

Occasionally, he would come back in the middle of the night, eat it, and toss the bowl into the sink. By the next morning, it was always washed and drying on the rack. She never once brought it up.

Garnett sat in the dark. The air smelled stale and distinctly empty.

The roses on the balcony were completely dead, their leaves curled into gray-brown husks. He still didn't know if that one cracked bud had ever bloomed.

He sat motionless. He didn't turn on the light.

***

It wasn't until the day before they were set to sign the final divorce papers that Lavinia found out Garnett was scheduled to host the Harper Group's shareholder meeting on the exact same day.

This shareholder meeting was critical for him.

Zenia was pregnant, and even though she was barely in her first trimester, she was already demanding a division of assets. Garnett, completely out of patience, had secretly reached out to minor shareholders to orchestrate a board shakeup and rip the chairman's seat right out from under his father.

If he succeeded, Harper Group would become his absolute domain.

Knowing how important the election was to him, Lavinia specifically called to ask if he could still make it to the registry the next morning.

Garnett, flipping through a stack of documents, answered in a gentle tone, "Don't worry. The shareholder meeting is in the afternoon, and our appointment is for the morning. I'll get the papers signed and make it back in time for the meeting. There's plenty of time."

"Well, make sure you bring your legal ID," Lavinia said. She could hardly believe he was actually being this cooperative.

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