Her smile wilted. "It's not going to work, you and me. I can't live like this, lurching from crisis to crisis. I love you too much to watch that happen. I hate what it turns me into. You're only happy when you're miserable, you know that? I can't do that forever. We'll be part of each others' lives forever, but I can't be Mrs Stressbunny forever." None of this was new. She'd shouted variations on this at him at many times in their relationship. The difference was that now she wasn't shouting. She was calm, assured, sad but not crying. Behind her in the hallway, he saw that she'd packed her suitcase, and the little suitcases the kids used when they travelled together. "Where will you go?" "I'm going to stay with Lucy, from college. She's living down the peninsula in Mountain View. She's got room for the kids." He felt like raging at her, promising her a bitter divorce and custody suit, but he couldn't do it. She was completely right, after all. Even though his first impulse was to argue, he couldn't do it just then. So she left, and Kettlewell was alone in his nice apartment with his phone and his computer and his lawsuits and his mind fizzing with ideas. # The last thing Sammy wanted was a fight. Dinah's promo was making major bank for the company -- and he was taking more and more meetings in Texas with Dinah, which was a hell of a perk. They'd shipped two million of the DiaBs, and were projecting ten million in the first quarter. Park admission was soaring and the revenue from the advertising was going to cover the entire cost of the next rev of the DiaBs, which would be better, faster, smaller and cheaper. That business with Death Waits and the new Fantasyland and the ride -- what did it matter now? He'd been so focused on the details that he'd lost track of the big picture. Walt Disney had made his empire by figuring out how to do the next thing, not wasting his energy on how to protect the last thing. It had all been a mistake, a dumb mistake, and now he was back on track. From all appearances, the lawsuits were on the verge of blowing away, anyway. Fantasyland -- he'd turned that over to Wiener, of all people, and he was actually doing some good stuff there. Really running with the idea of restoring it as a nostalgia site aimed squarely at fatkins, with lots of food and romantic kiddie rides that no kid would want to ride in the age of the break-neck coaster. The last thing he wanted was a fight. What he wanted was to make assloads of money for the company, remake himself as a power in the organization. But he was about to have a fight. Hackelberg came into his office unannounced. Sammy had some of the Imagineers in, showing him prototypes of the next model, which was being designed for more reliable shipping and easier packing. Hackelberg was carrying his cane today, wearing his ice-cream suit, and was flushed a deep, angry red that seemed to boil up from his collar.