The Brink

office looked exactly as Dan had thought it might. All glass panels, metal beams and revolving doors swallowing up and spitting out a parade of professional-looking

over the last few months, with all the irretrievable insults thrown back and forth, along with a few plates.

Mediation sounded kinder, less stressful than a full-blown, acrimonious courtroom battle of lawyers.

Both of them smiling in a way that betrayed a certain confidence about how they’d weather the coming years.

Both of them smiling in a way that betrayed a certain confidence about how they’d weather the coming years.

And yet here she was, opening the door to the most vulnerable hours of her life and giving him unprecedented access to the interior, domestic details of her marriage, her family and the fractures, cracks and dents across it all.

it was simply the supreme discomfort of a man who was just not used to being in their sort of environment.

Most of them staring at their phones instead of their feet.

She had tied a rope around the knowledge that tomorrow would bring a hangover, a flight and childcare, then attached it to a stone and dropped it to the bottom of the ocean.