But some things, once worn into an act of disrespect, stop being yours in the same way. They become evidence.
I carried it upstairs anyway and laid it across the bed in the guest room while I finished packing the last of the house.
Six months had passed since the funeral.
The divorce papers were nearly final. Grant had stopped trying to contact me directly after his attorney advised him, in what I imagined was very tired language, that continued outreach was not helping. His firm had quietly asked for his resignation after questions arose about expense reports and client disclosures. He kept the ten-year-old BMW he’d bought before our marriage, a watch collection of debatable taste, and a talent for blaming other people for outcomes with his fingerprints on them. Everything else shook out exactly the way Blackwood predicted.
The house sold in late spring.
I signed the final paperwork at the dining room table because I couldn’t bear one more trip downtown in heels for the ceremonial burial of my former life. Through the open windows came the smell of roses and cut grass and the low mechanical hum of a pool vacuum. I had once thought this house represented adulthood. Stability. Arrival. Now it felt like a beautifully staged set from which the actors had finally been dismissed.
A week later I met Grant one last time at the mediation office to finalize the divorce.
He looked older than six months. Men who build themselves around reflected wealth do. Once the mirror cracks, age finds them quickly.
We signed in silence for a while. Pens scratching. Pages turning. My attorney on one side, his on the other. The mediator explaining clauses in a voice so neutral it could have narrated weather satellites.
Then, when the attorneys stepped out to review one last addendum, Grant spoke.
“Are you happy?”
I kept my eyes on the page. “That’s a strange question from you.”
“I’m serious.”
I looked up.
The office was bland in the expensive way—cream walls, abstract art, filtered water in glass bottles. Somewhere down the hall, a copy machine beeped. Life reduced to signatures.
“You first,” I said.
He laughed once, tired and brittle. “Becca left.”
“I know.”