Messy. I almost smiled.
He didn’t stay long after that. Grabbed the folder, checked his phone, and headed for the door like he had somewhere better to be.
“Two weeks,” he said over his shoulder. “We’ll get everything finalized.”
“Two weeks?”
I nodded.
“Okay.”
He paused at the door like he expected something more. Tears. A question. Anything. I didn’t give him that. So he left. The front door closed with a soft click, and just like that the house was quiet again.
I stood there for a minute, still holding the pen. The kitchen felt different. Same countertops. Same light over the sink. Same faint hum of the refrigerator. But something had shifted. I could hear Ben in the other room laughing at something on his game. Ellie’s music, faint through the ceiling. Life was still happening.
I set the pen down and finally started clearing the plates. Small movements. Routine. Something to keep my hands busy. My mind was already moving somewhere else. Not to what I’d lost. To what I knew. To the things I’d seen over the past year. Little things at first, then bigger ones. Charges that didn’t make sense. Trips that didn’t line up. Emails that came through shared accounts before he switched everything over. He thought I hadn’t noticed, but I had. I always had. I rinsed a plate, set it in the dishwasher, and stared out the window over the sink. The backyard was dim, just the porch light casting a soft glow over the grass. I wasn’t afraid of his voice anymore. That was the strange part. For years, I’d adjusted myself around it, around his moods, his opinions, his version of things. Now it was just gone. What scared me wasn’t him. It was what I might find if I started looking closer.
The next morning, I called Marcia. Her office was off Meridian Street in Indianapolis. I’d found her number months ago and saved it under a fake name in my phone, just in case.
“Marcia Klein.”
“My name is Dana Mercer,” I said. “I think I need a lawyer.”
There was a pause.
“You think, or you know?”
“I signed divorce papers last night.”
Another pause. Longer this time.
“Come in,” she said. “Today.”
Her office was exactly what you’d expect. Neat but lived-in. Legal books lining one wall, a framed degree, a couple of family photos that looked like they’d been there a while. She sat behind her desk with a cup of tea, Earl Grey, I later learned, and read through the copy of the papers I’d brought. Her expression didn’t change much as she flipped pages. Then she set them down and looked at me.
“You signed this?” she asked.
“I did.”
“Without negotiating?”
“Yes.”
She leaned back in her chair and studied me.
“You understand what this is,” she said.
“A draft,” I said. “Not a final court order.”
That got her attention. Her eyebrows lifted just slightly.
“Go on.”
“I understand it’s what he wants the deal to be,” I said, “but it’s not what the court has approved.”
She nodded slowly.
“That’s correct.”
I took a breath.
“And I think he’s counting on me not knowing the difference.”
Marcia tapped the papers lightly with one finger.
“Men like your husband,” she said, “don’t usually make clean exits. They make fast ones.”
“That’s what I’m hoping.”
She gave a small, tight smile.
“Dana, this doesn’t work unless there’s something to find.”
I met her eyes.
“There is.”
She held my gaze a moment longer, then nodded once.
“All right,” she said. “Then we don’t rush.”
She slid the papers back toward me.
“We let him think he’s already won.”
Driving home, I didn’t turn on the radio. I just sat with the quiet. At a red light, I glanced at my phone sitting in the cup holder. Notifications. Emails. Things I’d ignored for months because I didn’t want to see what they meant. That was over. If I was going to lose everything, I wanted it to be because there was nothing left to find, not because I hadn’t looked.
That night, after the kids went to bed, I went out to the garage. There’s a shelf in the back where I keep old boxes. Tax files, warranty papers, school forms, the kind of things nobody thinks about until they need them. I pulled down a box labeled 2018-2020. Dust puffed up when I set it on the workbench. I opened it slowly. Folders. Receipts. Bank statements from before everything went paperless. I sat on the cold concrete floor and started flipping through them. Page by page. Date by date. Line by line. Outside, a car drove past. The garage light buzzed faintly overhead. Somewhere inside the house, the ice maker dropped another batch into the bin. Normal sounds. Normal life. And right there in the middle of it, I found the first thing that didn’t add up. A transfer. Four thousand eight hundred dollars. To an account I didn’t recognize. Dated the same weekend Scott had been in Chicago for work. I stared at it for a long time. Then I reached for my phone, because that wasn’t fear anymore. That was something else. Something sharper.
I wasn’t done. Not even close.
