By the time the mediation date was set, Kate and I had become efficient at avoiding each other. We had an unwritten schedule for the kitchen, a polite arrangement about groceries, and an understanding that neither of us would invite friends to the house without warning. She continued to ask occasional questions about whether I'd reconsidered counseling together. I continued to say that the legal process was moving forward. We were sharing an address while living in increasingly separate versions of the future.
I knew that some people, hearing the story later, would wonder why we stayed under the same roof. The mortgage, the practical uncertainty, and Sandra's advice about preserving my position were part of the explanation. Another part was that neither of us wanted to make a dramatic move before we knew how the house would be divided. A third part, which took me longer to admit, was simply habit. I'd lived there for years, and I knew where everything belonged, even after I no longer knew what belonged between us.
Kate started spending more nights out. Sometimes she said she was meeting friends, and sometimes she offered no explanation. I stopped asking because the answers had never helped me feel more certain. Once she returned after midnight and stood outside the guest room as though considering whether to knock. The floorboard near the door creaked beneath her feet, and then I heard her walk away. I lay awake wondering whether she'd wanted to apologize, argue, or ask where we'd left the laundry detergent.
One Sunday afternoon, she appeared while I was sorting papers at the dining table. She glanced at the labeled folders and gave a small, weary laugh. "You really made a project out of this," she said. I told her I needed the financial documents for the settlement process. She said it was sad that I had reduced our whole marriage to spreadsheets and percentages.
For a moment I wanted to show her the photographs of our first apartment, the ticket stubs from concerts, and the holiday cards I'd saved in a box upstairs. I wanted her to understand that I hadn't reduced our marriage to numbers; I was trying to divide the practical consequences of a relationship that had once been larger than any of them. But I could see how quickly the conversation would become another argument about how I was choosing to feel. I simply said the spreadsheets weren't a measure of the good years. They were records we needed because the good years hadn't been enough to keep us married.
Her expression shifted at that. She looked down at the edge of the table and said she didn't know when I'd become so cold. I answered that I didn't feel cold, only careful. She told me careful and cold were beginning to look the same from where she stood. Then she went upstairs, leaving me with papers I'd no longer been able to read.