An old-money NYC lawyer has shared her anguish after her financier husband of 20 years dumped her out of the blue during lockdown for another woman – and allegedly told her he didn’t want custody of their children.
Flobelle ‘Belle’ Fairbanks Burden, 54, says her husband Henry Davis announced he wanted to end their marriage while they sheltered from COVID at their $4.7 million Martha’s Vineyard holiday in spring 2020.
In a soul-baring article for the New York Times, the 54-year-old detailed the moment she, Davis and their two younger children, then 15 and 12, took shelter from the pandemic on the island – only to suddenly find herself a single mother.
Arriving on March 15 2020 Burden, a New York-based socialite who’s a descendant of railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt, described the stability and routine the family had while escaping lockdown describing the experience as ‘delightful’ to start.
But all that shattered after Burden – whose grandmother was legendary socialite Babe Paley – discovered her estranged husband had been harboring a secret relationship.
Burden wrote: ‘A week later, on March 22, at 6 a.m., my husband told me he wanted a divorce. He packed a bag, got in his Jeep and boarded a ferry. We had been married for nearly 21 years.
‘When he reached New York City, he laid out his narrative: He thought he had wanted our life but didn’t. He thought he was happy but wasn’t.
A switch had flipped. He didn’t want our house or our apartment. He didn’t want any custody of our children.
In the revealing article she claims that he ‘bought a sleek new Manhattan apartment, hired a well-known divorce lawyer,’ and treated her with a ‘consistent lack of empathy or sentiment.’
After a few weeks, Burden said Davis stopped contacting her.
She claims his two siblings, who she’d also been close to, ghosted her and said they could no longer speak to her because they needed to support their sibling.
Burden didn’t share any further details of her husband’s alleged affair, and says she’s unclear if that relationship is ongoing.
Burden alleged that the split stunned her, and recounted merrily planting blueberry bushes in the ritzy property’s garden with her former husband the year before in a haze of what she believed to be bucolic and matrimonial bliss.
Detailing the routine they’d established while sheltering, she said the family ‘delighted in the off-season use’ of the million dollar island escape.
Burden, who also resides in a multi-million dollar Tribeca loft, found out about the affair from a voicemail left to her from the husband of the
‘I’m sorry to tell you that your husband is having an affair with my wife,’ he said.
Sharing how she found out Davis had been unfaithful, Burden wrote: ‘There was another woman, as there often is when men leave.’
Burden married Henry Patterson Davis in June 1999 at her stepmother Susan’s home in Water Mill, NY after the pair met at a corporate law firm.
Their nuptials were announced in the New York Times – the same publication where Burden decided to detail its implosion in excoriating detail.
She said Davis’ ‘steadiness’ made her fall in love with him and he had a likeness to her father Carter Burden – who served as a New York City Councilman from 1969 to 1978.’
He was tall, blonde and lean, a similar silhouette to my father. He wore suits and rolled up his shirt sleeves as he worked. He was a grown-up,’ she reminisced.
‘When he walked into my office, shut the door and kissed me, I was done for.’
Burden claimed that a then love-stuck Davis had been ‘intent on marrying’ her within weeks of the kiss.
‘Pledging to take care of me, to step into my dead father’s role as my protector. And we did marry, within the year, both of us (I still believe) very much in love.’
The Harvard University educated lawyer said she’d been left the year she turned 50 the same age Davis ‘reached a pinnacle of professional success.’
But Burden hinted at another side to her husband, saying he had a ‘rebellious past’ that included ‘brushes with the law’ and a trail of broken romances – which she claimed had even resulted in some women stalking Davis.
She lamented over the isolation she felt and noted her husband’s cold demeanor admitting that she lost weight as a result.
‘I decided not to drink, knowing that it would make me sadder, but I also found it hard to eat,’ she said.
‘Within weeks I had shed 20 pounds, the self I had come to know over two decades of pregnancies and family life.’
Burden admitted she also struggled to understand Davis’ decision to blow up their decades long marriage but said she’d found some closure.
‘I sometimes see him from afar in our shared city neighborhood,’ she said. ‘He looks familiar, his posture and gait, his sandy blonde hair and orange sneakers, and my heart leaps a little at the sight of him. But then I remember he is a stranger, and I walk on.’
Two images of the pair remain online alongside Burden’s stepmother as they attended the New Yorkers for Children fall 2008 gala.
Burden is the daughter of the late Carter Burden and New York socialite Amanda Burden – who after the article posted a screenshot congratulating her daughter. ‘A great story by a great writer. My amazing daughter,’ she captioned the post.
Davis is still followed by mutual family members online but was not seen to make any comment on the article on social media or otherwise.
