"All right," I said. "I'll file. I've already spoken with an attorney. We can handle everything fairly, but I'm not going to keep pleading for basic respect."
The color drained from her face. She lowered the phone and looked at me for a long, bewildered moment. I saw her search my expression for a sign that I was making a threat of my own, waiting for a smile or a raised voice or anything that would prove I wasn't serious.
"You can't just say that," she whispered.
"You said it first. I'm answering you."
"I wasn't asking you to actually do it."
That sentence told me more than she'd intended. She had counted on divorce remaining something she could invoke without consequence, a word powerful enough to frighten me but not real enough to affect her. I wasn't celebrating that realization. I felt sick, and I was suddenly aware that the chicken in the oven might burn if I didn't check it soon.
She waited a few more seconds. Then her expression hardened, as though anger might still restore the old arrangement. "Fine," she said. "Have it your way."
She walked out, and I didn't follow her. The familiar part of me wanted to call after her, ask her to be careful, and reassure her we could talk tomorrow. I stood there instead until I heard her car leave. Then I took the chicken out of the oven, turned off the stove, and put our dinner away.
I wasn't feeling strong. I was shaking so badly I dropped a fork into the sink. I sat at the table and tried to picture what came next: a call to Alana, difficult conversations about money, signatures, a home that would no longer hold the life we'd imagined. I had spent months thinking about divorce in distant, hypothetical terms. Now I understood that deciding something was possible didn't make carrying it out painless.
My phone buzzed with a text from Natalie. You can't seriously mean this.
I read it twice before answering. I do. I wish we had found a different way to talk, but I can't keep doing what we've been doing.
There was no reply. I placed the phone facedown and carried the plates to the dishwasher. When the driveway lights came on sixteen minutes later, I felt my whole body tense. She had barely been gone, but I knew without hearing her footsteps that something had shifted for her too.
Natalie came into the kitchen and stopped just inside the doorway. Her coat was crooked, and one of the earrings she'd spent so long choosing was missing. She looked at the table, the cleared plates, the quiet house, and then at me. She seemed genuinely frightened.
"Randy, tell me you didn't mean that."
"I meant it."
She looked around as though expecting to find a suitcase or a note declaring that she'd been thrown out. "Where are your things?" she asked.
"They're here. I live here. So do you."
"Then what are you doing?"
"I'm standing in my kitchen having the conversation I've been asking us to have for months."