Chapter 2
Sarah
A week later, I was standing outside the Tom Ford boutique in Palo Alto, watching through the floor-to-ceiling windows as a perfectly coiffed woman circled my husband like he was a mannequin.
Rachel, his new "image consultant," held up a charcoal suit against Jake's frame. I could see the price tag—three thousand dollars.
"Jake, you're no longer coding in your garage," Rachel was saying as I slipped inside. "You're a CEO worth fifty million dollars. Your image needs to reflect that."
Jake caught my reflection in the mirror and his face flushed. "Sarah! I wasn't expecting you."
"Coffee delivery," I said weakly, holding up the Starbucks cup. "But I can see you're busy."
Rachel smiled politely but her eyes assessed me from head to toe—my Target jeans, my clearance rack sweater, my practical nursing shoes. I felt like a bug under a microscope.
"We're just finishing up," she said. "Jake's transformation is quite remarkable."
In the mirror, Jake looked like a stranger. The expensive suit hugged his frame perfectly, making him look taller, more confident. More like the men I'd seen in his office.
"But Sarah likes me in jeans and hoodies," Jake said quietly. "That's who I really am."
Rachel's laugh was musical and condescending. "That was the old you. The new you attracts investors like Madison. Trust me, she's not interested in hoodie guys."
I felt a cold sensation when I heard she said Madison's name.
I was in our kitchen preparing dinner, excitement bubbling up as I planned what I thought would be a celebration.
"Honey, let's throw a party!" I called to Jake, who was hunched over his laptop at the kitchen table. "Mike and Lisa would be so excited to see how far you've come. And remember Tom from community college? He's been asking about you."
Jake's fingers stopped typing. "Sarah, I can't have community college people at my events. What if VCs see those photos on social media?"
The wooden spoon in my hand went still. "Those people? Jake, they're our friends. They supported us when we had nothing."
"That's exactly the problem." He didn't even look up from his screen. "I need to be seen with the right crowd now."
From the living room, Emma called out, "Daddy! Can we invite my friends from school to the party?"
"I'm too busy for parties," Jake replied, his voice flat.
I watched our five-year-old daughter's face fall through the kitchen doorway. She'd been so excited when she overheard me planning.
"Jake," I said carefully, "she just wants to celebrate with you."
He said, "Sarah, you don't understand the pressure I'm under. Image is everything in this industry."
The man who used to spend Saturday mornings building blanket forts with Emma couldn't spare an evening for the people who'd believed in him when nobody else would.
A month later, I sat alone in a tiny plastic chair at Emma's parent-teacher conference, watching other couples chat with Ms. Garcia about their children's progress.
"Emma often mentions her daddy's success," Ms. Garcia said kindly. "We'd love to have him speak about technology careers to the class."
My cheeks burned. "He's... very busy with his company. Maybe next time."
"Mommy," Emma whispered, tugging at my sleeve, "why doesn't Daddy come to my school like other daddies?"
"Daddy loves you, sweetheart," I said, my heart breaking. "He's just working very hard."
On the classroom wall, Emma's latest art project hung with the others: "My Family."
She'd drawn herself and me holding hands, but the space where Daddy should have been was conspicuously empty—just white paper where a third figure should have stood.
Ms. Garcia followed my gaze. "She's been drawing a lot of two-person families lately. It's quite common when fathers travel frequently for business."
That same evening, Emma and I were curled up on the couch watching Disney+ when she grabbed the remote and accidentally switched to a live stream.
TechCrunch Disrupt, flashed across the screen, and there was my husband on a panel, looking impossibly polished in his new Tom Ford suit. His hair was perfectly styled, his posture confident. He looked like he belonged on that stage.
"Daddy!" Emma squealed, pointing at the screen.
The interviewer leaned forward. "Jake, how do you balance this incredible success with your personal life?"
My husband—my husband who hadn't eaten dinner with us in two weeks—smiled directly into the camera.
He remarked, "I'm one hundred percent focused on building SoulSync. Personal relationships are a distraction I can't afford right now."
"So no wife, no kids holding you back?" the interviewer pressed.
Jake's laugh was casual, dismissive. "None. I'm married to my work. That's what it takes to build a unicorn."
Emma looked up at me, her little brow furrowed. "Daddy said he doesn't have a family. But we're his family, right Mommy?"
I couldn't speak. I couldn't breathe. On national television, in front of thousands of viewers, Jake had erased us completely.
"Daddy's just... playing pretend for work," I managed, but the words tasted like ash.
That night, I lay in our bed pretending to sleep while Jake scrolled through his phone beside me. The blue glow illuminated his face every few seconds, and I could see him smiling at something on the screen.
At 11:30, his phone buzzed with a text. Through barely open eyes, I watched him read it, his face lighting up like Christmas morning.
[Madison: Congrats on TechCrunch! 🎉 Dinner at Atelier Crenn tomorrow? My treat for the rising star ⭐]
My stomach dropped. Atelier Crenn—the three-Michelin-star restaurant that required months of advance booking.
Jake's fingers flew over the keyboard: [Would love to. Thanks for thinking of me ❤️]
A heart emoji. To another woman. While I lay inches away, pretending to sleep.
I watched him delete the entire conversation, thinking I hadn't seen. Thinking I was foolish enough not to notice that he put his phone on silent mode.
As Jake carefully placed the phone face-down on his nightstand, my heart sank to the floor. The man who used to share every detail of his day with me, who'd never hidden so much as a work email, now guarded his phone like state secrets.
I realized that the programmer who used to eat ramen noodles with me in our garage, dreaming about changing the world, had vanished completely. In his place lay a stranger—a Silicon Valley CEO I didn't recognize, one who was learning to live a life where Emma and I were just obstacles to his algorithm of success.