After the gavel banged—a sound that felt like a physical blow to my chest—Patrick walked up to me in the hallway. He didn’t look like the man I’d slept beside for nearly four decades. He looked hollow.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a plain, navy-blue debit card.
“This is for you,” he said, his voice devoid of emotion. “There’s three hundred dollars on it. It should cover you for a few days until you get settled.”
Three hundred dollars.
That was the price of thirty-seven years. That was the value he placed on the children we raised, the grief we navigated, the life we built.
I took the card, my fingers brushing his for a microsecond. He flinched. He turned around and walked out the double doors, into the gray Ohio afternoon, and I never saw him again.
