I wrote back that my lawyer would handle financial discussions and that I wanted everything documented properly. Clare answered with a thumbs-up icon, which felt strangely cruel after ten years of goodnight kisses and shared grocery lists. I asked whether she was safe and had everything she needed from the house. She responded that James was taking care of her. That phrase bothered me even more than her silence would have.
I forwarded the messages to Dana. She replied the next morning that we should keep correspondence factual and refrain from arguments about James. She would request account statements, property records, and full disclosures from both sides. I needed to preserve the records that existed, not go looking through private devices or create new conflicts. I was grateful for the discipline of her advice because anger had begun to offer me some very stupid ideas.
During that first week I moved through work like a man relearning how to walk. I visited a commercial customer, stood beside a flower bed we had installed in spring, and could not remember whether I'd already discussed fall maintenance with the property manager. A young crew member asked for help with a broken irrigation valve, and I answered too sharply. I apologized ten minutes later and explained that I had a difficult personal situation but that it didn't excuse taking it out on him. The kid shrugged, said he hoped things improved, and went back to work.
Marcus quietly handled more than I asked him to. He rescheduled crews, checked fuel invoices, and stopped customers from cornering me with long conversations when they could see something was wrong. Once, after I spent half an hour staring at an estimate without writing a number, he leaned through my office door and said, "You don't have to prove you're okay by working until you break." I wanted to argue that the business needed me. Instead I handed him the estimate, and he completed it correctly before lunch.
At home I slept on the couch for several nights because the bedroom felt too large. I found a receipt from a restaurant Clare and I used to visit and caught myself trying to calculate whether she'd been with James on the date printed there. I could have continued until every memory was contaminated by suspicion. Finally I put the receipt in a drawer and told myself there would be enough real facts to face without inventing more. I was learning that betrayal encourages a kind of detective work that has no end and rarely delivers peace.