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BLIND PROPHET

PROLOGUE

CAROLINE

The day ran its course like any other September day.

It might have been rainy or sunny, but the weather was immaterial. Life around me continued. The lights flicked on and off. The occasional siren sounded, punctuated by horns. Pedestrians passed along the sidewalks. It was an unremarkable September day.

Yet my fractured insides struggled with insufferable pain.

My fingers trembled as I zipped the last suitcase. I didn’t want to leave, but I couldn’t stay.

I stared at the door for hours. A weak voice begged to leave a note, but I couldn’t be that person. I'd like to think I sat there, sitting beside my luggage, remembering our past, but that wouldn’t be true. I chanted to myself, in a near-meditative trance, wearing a crisp, white blouse and navy slacks that would garner Gwyneth Paltrow’s approval. Makeup lightly done for a natural glow, hair glossy and smooth, gold Cartier bracelets on one wrist, and a diamond-encrusted Rolex on the other, pale pink freshly manicured nails.

If the paparazzi lingered outside, their photographs would show a well-put-together woman leaving for a brief trip.

My nerves churned. I hoped for luck, to exit unobserved. The last thing I wanted was to have my photograph circulate with rumors about marital strife.

An unnamed source might say they’ve sensed issues for months. A writer would speculate Dorian and Caroline Moore haven’t been seen together since the MOMA exhibit two months prior. And a body language expert might decode a photograph from two years prior to one snapped when we’d been ducking paparazzi. “See how she’s changed? Her arms are wrapped around her middle, she’s crouching forward like she doesn’t want him touching her, and they aren’t making eye contact. ”

I could write the articles myself.

The lock clicked. I swallowed.

My spine stiffened. My chest ached.

The doorknob turned.

His gaze tracked me and the two suitcases.

Wordlessly, he closed the door and locked it.

When he faced me again, his shoulders sagged, I think. Time may have painted that flicker of emotion in the recesses of my memory. His freshly shaven jaw held no discernible emotion.

“So, this is it.”

It wasn't a question, rather a statement of an expected event.

“Where will you go?”

“I'll stay with my parents.” In Connecticut, the paparazzi would be less present. At his insistence, I quit my job after we married. Ironically, if he’d let me keep it, I might have thrived. Well, thrived is a strong verb. It’s possible I wouldn’t have suffocated.

Anger surfaced with those thoughts. If I recall correctly, I made no attempt to conceal the emotion.

“You won’t get a dollar more than the prenuptial agreement allows, you know that, right?”

His accusation sliced like a scalpel, deliberate and strategic. When he chose to speak, he did so with intention.

“I don’t want a fight.”

I want my sanity. My confidence. My sense of worth.

He stood there by my suitcases. Unreadable. Silent.

I don’t know what I expected or why I waited for hours for the awkward interlude. It was a marriage no one wanted, and it ran its course.

When I stood, I swiped my palms against my trousers and noticed how cold my hands had grown.

Are photographers outside? The question died on my tongue. It didn’t matter.

A thousand regrets weighed down my chest, and a singular hope kept it functioning.

If he had nothing to say, neither did I.

My hand fell to the luggage handle, and his covered mine.

He cupped my cheek and forced me to look up into his cloudy eyes.

Silent tears leaked from eyes that hadn’t truly seen me in months.

And then his lips covered mine, and I splintered. Our kiss stemmed the tearful tide. I clung to him, leaning on his strength.

When he broke the kiss, he breathed into my ear, “One last time?”

That’s what he wanted. Sex.

His last words to me.

As feared, when I exited the townhome, I faced a flash of lights.

One photographer with a long-range lens across the street. Two others hovered closer to my left. My good side. Almost as if he planned it.

He could have. We had a security video in our living area accessible by his phone. He could have seen me and my suitcases and known exactly what was coming.

I held my head high.

“Where are you going, Mrs. Moore?”

“Are the rumors true?”

“Caroline, are you separating?”

I forced a cold, cordial smile. A barely there smile that straddled the line of detached model and wealthy philanthropist with a disdain for the media. A parting gift for the three photographers, strategically positioned for maximum coverage. Just like a surveillance operation, except their target was emotional devastation rather than intelligence gathering.

Newspaper photographs often struggle to capture nuance. In the articles about that September day, the captions spoke of a tear-streaked face, but the photographs, especially those printed in black and white, didn’t show tears. My stoic expression concealed the evidence of heartbreak.

Social media, however, was full of commentary filled with vitriol. How could it be otherwise? After all, I walked away from the golden boy, an American prince, a billionaire. Stupid, crazy, cheating slut, ice cold, plastic, full of filler, greedy, social climber: they didn’t know what exactly I had to have done to be thrown out of the gilded castle, but one thing was certain: In the court of public opinion, I held the blame.