The Sky To Stop Us by M G Vassanji

His wife has left him. Her sports car is not in the driveway, the pool area normally cacophonous at this hour with the screams and laughter of his daughter Zafira and her neighbourhood friends is strangely forelorn; there's no sign of the kitchen having been in use recently, and there are four phone messages, the first one from 12:12 as one of their friends precisely logged it. And there is this note on the table in the family room. I've gone away for a while with Z, will call you later. I want to think things over for myself. ---A. How serious is it? He puts his chilled beer glass to his chin and mulls over that, feeling suddenly uncontrollably tearful. It's the tiredness; you want to come home at night to pour out your frustrations and be comforted, not for this. What did it mean? Was it coming? Had he seen the symptoms? She had taken to making certain kinds of statements lately, in humour--so he had interpreted them. One of these days I should leave you. It had seemed unthinkable. These remarks would needle him, for how easily they came to her; why make them, he had thought, why the empty threats? Not so empty now. And right in the midst of a major deal worth millions, many millions perhaps...right when the world was his, theirs, for those with the guts and the smarts to take it and hold it in their hands; opportunities, vistas were opening up before them one after another without end; why would she want to put brakes on that, deny him all that?....................