I looked toward the kitchen drawer where the cottage keys were hidden. For a moment I wanted to tell him what I'd bought, but the secret still felt too tender to share. Daniel asked whether there was anything in the house I needed help sorting. I said I had no idea what belonged where anymore. He told me to start with something small, and the next morning I cleared a single shelf in the bathroom. It took five minutes and left me feeling exhausted.
On Thursday evening, the night before signing, Dana called to confirm that Clare's lawyer had accepted the condition requiring any settlement payment to go directly to an account in Clare's name. She said the draft also clarified which funds were separate property, which were being divided, and what documents would be exchanged. I thanked her and asked if I needed to prepare anything else. "Sleep," she said. "You've done the paperwork. Tomorrow your job is to read before you sign and let me handle the room."
I tried. I made dinner, turned off my phone, and lay down before eleven. But my mind kept returning to Friday morning, to Rachel and the two children, to the fact that James would soon be standing across a table from me pretending he was there to protect Clare. I thought about the booster seat glowing in the Range Rover on the night she left. I'd seen the truth without knowing what it meant. Now I knew more than Clare did, and the knowledge felt less like an advantage than another kind of responsibility.
At six the next morning, I called Rachel. I told her the settlement meeting was still scheduled, and that Dana had approved my sharing the expected departure time if it helped her attorney complete service. Rachel thanked me and said the process server would be ready. Then she hesitated and told me she might need to bring the children downtown because her sister had been called into work. I asked her not to make the children part of any plan. She said she wouldn't; they would be with her, and she would do everything she could to keep the adult conflict away from them.
When we ended the call, I stood by the front door holding my truck keys. My work boots were lined up where I'd left them the night Clare moved out, except I'd cleaned the mud from their soles. The hallway looked almost ordinary again. I wondered if one day I would walk through it without automatically seeing those suitcases in the corner. Then I put on my jacket and drove downtown to sign the papers that would make our separation real.
The Friday sky was the color of wet concrete. Rain moved in fine sheets across the windshield as I drove downtown, and every traffic light seemed to stay red a little longer than it had any right to. I passed the bakery where Clare used to ask me to stop for cinnamon rolls on Sunday mornings. For half a second I felt the old impulse to turn the wheel into the parking lot and buy two. Then I kept going, because habits can outlive their reasons without asking permission.