I looked down at the envelope again, and for a dizzy second the kitchen blurred. Fifteen years of knowing him. Ten years of marriage. Seven years of raising our daughter. School pickups and mortgage payments and Christmas mornings and emergency room visits and slow Saturday breakfasts and fights over nothing and apologies and all the tiny domestic seams that stitch a life together. And now there it was, flattened into papers.
“You already filed,” I repeated.
“Yes.”
“So this wasn’t a conversation.”
His jaw tightened. “Emily, I’m not doing this.”
“You already did it.”
The old defensive impatience flashed across his face, the one I had spent the last two years trying not to provoke. “This is exactly the problem.”
“What is?”
“This.” He gestured toward me, toward my voice, my shock, my existence. “Everything becomes emotional with you.”
I stared at him. Somewhere behind me, Lily pushed back her little chair and stood up, unnoticed by him, clutching the red crayon in one hand and a stuffed rabbit in the other.