After Kate went upstairs, I wrote the eleven dates into my notes. I compared them with my work calendar and found that nine coincided with nights I had remained at the distribution center later than usual. One matched an overnight trip I'd taken to inspect a supplier warehouse. The other was a night Kate had told me she was attending a department dinner. I didn't use the matches to accuse her. I forwarded the information to Sandra and asked whether it was relevant enough to preserve, while recognizing that the legal significance would depend on more than my suspicion.
Sandra replied the next morning. She told me to retain the records and the context in which I'd accessed them, and not to engage in any further investigation of Kate's private communications. She also cautioned me that the number of nights someone had been unfaithful was not necessarily decisive in a property dispute. Her caution was welcome. I was beginning to understand how easy it would be to turn pain into an endless search for evidence, treating every detail as if finding one more fact might somehow undo the first one.
Priya noticed how tired I looked before anyone else at work did. She'd been my colleague for three years and a real friend for two, though neither of us had used that word until one afternoon when she helped me move a heavy dining table into the house. She was in her mid-thirties and divorced, and she had a way of telling the truth without requiring everyone to applaud her courage afterward. When I first told her my marriage was failing, she listened in the break room while stirring tea. Then she said, "You're not overreacting," and let the statement stand.
I appreciated that she didn't ask for details she didn't need. At lunch she talked about work problems and her sister's new puppy, giving me room to be a normal person for half an hour. When my attention wandered, she didn't call me back with a concerned expression. She simply waited until I rejoined the conversation. Her friendship taught me something I hadn't understood during the worst arguments with Kate: support can feel like the absence of pressure.
About three weeks into this strange new routine, Priya came to my desk carrying her laptop. She asked whether we could talk somewhere private. We used a small meeting room that was usually reserved for carrier calls, and she showed me a LinkedIn message she'd received from an account with no profile photo and no meaningful connections. The sender claimed to be seeking an informal reference about my professional judgment, particularly how I behaved under stress and whether I'd ever allowed personal matters to interfere with work.
The wording bothered me more than a direct insult would have. There was no company name, no legitimate recruiter, and no specific position attached to the inquiry. It read like someone trying to establish a weakness without revealing why the information was being collected. Priya had not replied. She had saved a screenshot and reported the message through the platform's suspicious-contact feature before showing it to me.