Quick. Clean. Paperwork. Signatures. A ribbon tied around the mess so he could walk out and tell people he’d “handled it” like everything else.
At least that was what he believed.
I listened as his lawyer—polished, courteous, voice trained to sound reasonable even when it wasn’t—began listing the assets my husband expected to keep. It came out like a grocery receipt: the house, the business accounts, the retirement funds, the investment portfolio, the vacation property his parents had “helped with,” as if that phrase should erase all the years I had spent keeping his life stitched together.
My husband leaned back with that particular posture he wore when he wanted to look unconcerned: shoulders loose, chin slightly lifted, one hand draped over the armrest. The faintest smirk sat at the edge of his mouth, the expression of someone who had already rehearsed the victory speech.
I had seen that smirk in other rooms.
