Afterward, I sat in the kitchen until the late afternoon light left the windows. Biscuit needed dinner, so I got up and fed him, grateful for a duty that couldn't be postponed while I fell apart. I washed his bowl, folded a towel that had been hanging over a chair, and checked the freezer temperature in the kitchen refrigerator because habit is a stubborn thing. Everything in the apartment worked as it should have. That almost made the sadness harder to understand.
I thought of my father's old advice about trusting a measurement only after checking the instrument. For years I had accepted Celeste's explanations as the instrument, and when the readings didn't make sense, I assumed the fault was in my own judgment. Now independent records from separate places were beginning to point toward the same answer. The memory of her smiling into Briana's speakerphone returned, and I realized the humiliation I'd felt then was not a misunderstanding. It was the first honest glimpse of how little room my feelings had been given in the plans she'd already made.
I wrote one more note in the folder for Diane. It said: Do not assume every expense is proved until the original records arrive. Beneath that, I wrote: Ask about Biscuit, the lease, and a fair division of the account. It was a modest list for a marriage ending under such circumstances. But in that moment, writing down the next responsible step was the only way I knew how to keep moving without making the damage worse.
Sunday morning, I woke before Biscuit. That almost never happened. I lay still for a while, listening to the occasional car pass outside and trying to picture Celeste's flight home without imagining what she had been doing before boarding it. My phone held no message from her except an automated notice that the airline's flight status had changed. She had sent me the itinerary before the trip, back when I still thought Briana would be sitting beside her.
I spent the morning doing ordinary things slowly. I washed towels, wiped down the counters, changed the sheets in the guest room, and gathered Celeste's mail into a neat pile. I didn't pack her clothes or make a display of removing her from the home. I knew she had legal rights to the place where we'd lived together, and I wanted the next steps handled fairly even if I was deeply hurt. What I could do was make sure there was somewhere for each of us to sleep without sharing a bed that had become unbearable to me.
Diane returned my message before lunch. I told her about the booking confirmation, Natalie Whitaker's call, and the likely connection between the watch and the unexplained savings withdrawals. Diane listened, then reminded me that financial evidence could be relevant to property division but that the rules would depend on the state and the exact circumstances. She asked for complete copies of the statements and advised me to make no public allegations about the company while Natalie followed her own process. "You don't have to solve her employer's problems," she said. "Your responsibility is to make lawful decisions about your own life."
I asked whether she could arrange for Celeste to be formally served after we spoke. Diane said yes and explained how her office would handle it. I had a courtesy copy of the petition in a large envelope, but I understood that showing it to Celeste did not replace whatever legal notice the court required. That mattered to me more than the dramatic image of putting divorce papers in somebody's hand. I had spent enough years living inside arguments about what people supposedly meant; I wanted the next part to be documented and unambiguous.