I also told Priya I'd probably be absent most of that Thursday. She asked if I wanted her to check in afterward. I said I didn't know how long the meeting would last, and she told me she'd send one message late in the afternoon and wouldn't be offended if I ignored it. That kind of courtesy had become unusually precious to me. She was offering help while leaving me in control of whether to accept it.
In the days before mediation, I started gathering the small things I wanted to keep from the house. Not moving them, simply deciding what mattered. There were books Daniel had given me, a toolbox inherited from our father, my grandfather's old wristwatch, and photographs from trips Kate and I had taken. I found a box of holiday decorations and sat on the floor looking at an ornament we'd bought our first Christmas together. I placed it back in the box because I couldn't decide what to do with it, and for once I allowed a decision to remain unfinished.
I had nightmares more frequently then. They weren't about Kate and the coworker in any direct way. In one, I was trying to manage a warehouse where every label had been removed from the shelves, and no matter how carefully I searched, nothing was where it belonged. In another, I kept trying to reach our house, but every road turned into a dead end. Peter, my counselor, said stress often found familiar imagery, and the dreams didn't need to be interpreted as secret messages. Sometimes the mind was simply trying to organize an experience that resisted organization.
He asked what I was most afraid would happen at mediation. I expected to say that I might lose my money or the house. Instead I said I was afraid I'd be made to seem unreasonable for wanting the truth acknowledged. Peter asked who needed to acknowledge it for me to live differently. I didn't have an answer, because some part of me still wanted Kate to admit exactly what she'd done and why it had mattered. I was beginning to suspect that wanting that admission might keep me attached to her long after the divorce paperwork was finished.
On the night before mediation, I sat at the kitchen table and reviewed the binder one last time. The eleven core items had expanded into nineteen numbered entries after we added supporting financial records, statements, and the HR closure documentation. I checked the order against Sandra's index, then put the papers into my bag. There was no satisfaction in the thickness of the folder. It was simply what I'd been able to assemble from the pieces of a life I hadn't expected to have to explain.