She nodded once, like I’d confirmed something she’d already suspected. “Then we do it clean. Paperwork. Timing. No drama from you — he’ll provide enough of his own.”
We moved faster than Ethan would have believed I was capable of moving. He’d spent years operating under the assumption that I was the slow one, the cautious one, the one who needed things explained twice. It never occurred to him that I’d simply been waiting for a reason.
I filed for divorce within forty-eight hours of that text. I froze my credit. I opened a new checking account at a bank across town where Ethan had no relationship. I printed and organized every threatening message, every contemptuous email, every dismissive text going back six months. There were more than I’d realized. He had put his disregard for me in writing, over and over again, with the careless confidence of someone who never imagined those words would be used against him.
The careless confidence is what really did him in.
He’d forwarded his flight itinerary to our shared email account — an account he’d apparently forgotten I still had access to. It told me exactly when they were leaving, exactly when they were coming back, and exactly how many days I had.
