“Then we'll start with facts.”
Wednesday, the sixth day, Natalie sent another text. Stop being childish. We're both adults. It arrived while I was waiting outside a law office in downtown Columbus. I'd found Leah Bennett through a referral from an attorney who had helped us with a property dispute years earlier. Her office was on the third floor of an old brick building with windows that looked toward a row of street trees. I sat in my car for a full five minutes before going inside, staring at the brass lettering beside the entrance. Bennett Family Law. Until then, divorce had been something other people did, the sort of event you spoke about in careful tones at family dinners.
Leah was in her early fifties and had the calm directness of someone who had seen people arrive in every state between fury and disbelief. She offered me water and asked me to tell her what had happened from the beginning. I gave her the facts without embellishment. When I finished, she didn't congratulate me for being decisive or suggest an elaborate strategy to punish Natalie. She asked practical questions: whose names were on the deed, whether we had children, what accounts were joint, how our incomes differed, whether we had signed any business agreements that might be affected by divorce.
“We don't have children,” I said. The sentence sounded heavier than it had in years. Natalie and I had once planned to, but after several unsuccessful attempts and a pregnancy loss, we'd stopped talking about it. Neither of us had wanted to force the other into another medical cycle or another set of hopes. We had said we'd revisit the subject when life became less complicated. Somehow, life never did.
Leah nodded without pressing. “I'm sorry you're having to deal with this. Let me explain what the process can and cannot do.”
She described a contested divorce filing, financial disclosures, temporary arrangements, mediation, and the difference between a prepared petition and a final judgment. She told me that our house was marital property and that Natalie had legal rights to it regardless of where she'd spent the preceding nights. I couldn't simply change the locks or empty the accounts because I was angry. She also cautioned me not to dig through Natalie's private communications, impersonate her online, or make decisions that a judge would later see as punishment rather than protection.
“I don't want revenge,” I told her.
“Good. Revenge is usually expensive, and it rarely gives people what they think it will.”
“I want to know whether I'm allowed to say I'm done.”
Leah looked at me for a moment. “You're allowed to make that decision even if the other person disagrees. It doesn't mean all the practical questions are answered. But you don't need permission to begin the process.”
We spent another hour reviewing the ownership structure of Oak & Stone. I held a seventy-five percent membership interest, and Ryan held twenty-five percent, a split established when we'd reorganized the company into an LLC five years earlier. Leah said the business valuation would need careful attention. Natalie had supported the company during years when it couldn't pay me a normal salary, and that support might matter in the equitable division of marital assets. I didn't argue. I remembered what she'd sacrificed, and I had no desire to rewrite history merely because the ending hurt.
Before I left, Leah asked whether I wanted her to prepare a petition. I said I wasn't sure. She handed me a folder of information and said I could take a day or a week, but that I should avoid allowing the uncertainty to paralyze me. I walked out into the afternoon with the folder tucked under my arm. The city looked exactly as it had when I'd arrived. Buses stopped along High Street, people carried lunch back to their offices, and a man outside a coffee shop was laughing into his phone. I had expected the first visit to a divorce lawyer to feel like crossing a bridge that collapsed behind me. Instead, it felt like discovering there was a road where I'd believed there was only a wall.
That evening, Ryan called. I answered because he was asking about a supplier, and we had a delivery scheduled early the next morning. We dealt with the work question in five minutes. Then he asked whether I'd heard from Natalie. I said I had, and that the messages were mostly complaints about my not responding.
“Maybe she wants you to fight for her,” he said.
“Fighting for a marriage doesn't mean fighting an unknown number of men for your wife.”
“You always were stubborn.”