She kissed Biscuit on the head, shouldered her bag, and went to work. I sat at the table until my coffee cooled. When Biscuit came over and rested his chin on my knee, I bent to pet him and noticed my hands were steady. It was not the calm of someone who didn't care. It was the stillness of someone finally understanding that the same argument could not be solved by having it one more time.
I went to work because customers did not stop needing refrigeration just because my marriage was failing. The first call was a restaurant whose walk-in cooler had an iced evaporator coil, and the second was a small pharmacy where a maintenance contractor had installed the wrong sensor. I completed the work, filled out the service records, and drove to a quiet spot behind a warehouse before making the phone call I'd been considering since two in the morning. My contacts still listed Diane Okafor under my father's estate paperwork. She answered through her office, sounding pleasantly surprised to hear from me until I explained why I was calling.
Diane was a precise woman who had helped my family through a year of documents and difficult decisions after my father's death. She didn't interrupt when I described the argument, the money, and the sentence Celeste had repeated the next morning. She asked whether I was seeking advice about reconciliation or whether I had already decided to end the marriage. I said I wasn't sure how to separate those things yet. Then I admitted that I had spent the entire night calculating how to leave.
"It's an important distinction," she said. "You don't need to prove your spouse is a bad person in order to decide you cannot remain married." She asked if our accounts were joint, whose names were on the lease, and whether either of us had significant assets outside the marriage. I told her about the house fund, the monthly transfers, and the ordinary furniture and cars that made up most of our life. She explained that how marital property would be handled depended on the applicable state law and the full financial picture, not simply on whose paycheck had funded an account.
"Can I protect the savings?" I asked. "I'm worried she may spend more while she's away."
Diane said we could review the records and take legitimate steps to preserve money for eventual division, but she cautioned me not to empty accounts, conceal assets, or pretend marital funds belonged to me alone. She wanted statements showing the balance before and after the withdrawals. She also wanted me to avoid making threats or sharing private information online. I wrote everything down on the back of a service invoice because it was the only paper I had handy.
Before we ended the call, she asked whether Celeste had used divorce as a threat before. I almost said no out of habit, then remembered her sister's wedding, when she had told me I was lucky she bothered to take me to family gatherings. I remembered an anniversary dinner when she said she could easily find someone who appreciated her more if I kept making everything about money. Both times I'd laughed, apologized, and tried to restore the evening. Diane listened quietly and said, "You have been hearing this message for a while, Owen. You may just be hearing it clearly now."