Part 1 — The Two-Hour Notice
The divorce papers were waiting on the kitchen table when I came home from work, arranged beside a handwritten note as if my eight-year marriage were a package someone had decided to return without speaking to customer service. The note was written in my husband’s heavy, impatient hand.
Sign these. Take what belongs to you. You have two hours.
I stood in the doorway with my laptop bag still on my shoulder and looked at the house we had painted together, argued inside, hosted Thanksgiving in, and once believed would hold children if life had been kinder. The lights were on in every room, which meant Owen had already been there with someone else. Her perfume hangs in the hallway, sweet and expensive, settling over my furniture like a claim.
My husband, Owen Merritt, called while I was still reading.
“Did you find the papers?”
His voice sounded bright, almost relieved, and there was a woman laughing softly in the background. I didn’t ask who she was. I already knew. Lindsay Hale had worked with him at his uncle’s development firm, the kind of woman who wore cream sweaters, called cruel honesty, and had smiled at me in the grocery store two weeks earlier as if she knew something I did not.
“I found them,” I said.
“Good. I want this handled cleanly.”
Cleanly. Men like Owen always loved that word when they were leaving a mess for someone else to scrub from the floor.
“You gave me two hours.”
“You do not need more than that. Most of the furniture was purchased by my family, and the house will be mine after probate clears. Grandma’s estate is finally moving, and I cannot have complications.”
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