Chapter 7: Process
The legal process moved at the speed of disclosures and deadlines rather than the speed of anyone’s feelings.
Financial affidavits were exchanged. The security footage and incident logs were entered into the record without objection that could survive the timestamps. Caleb’s counsel attempted, once, to frame the afternoon as a private marital difficulty that had been unnecessarily escalated by technology. My counsel answered with the community alert, the neighbor statements already in informal circulation, and the simple fact that the discovery had occurred in open air five feet from the kitchen door. The framing attempt did not recur.
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I attended the required conferences, signed the required papers, and left the performances of regret or outrage to whoever still found them useful. Caleb occupied the residual role of a man adjusting to the loss of a narrative in which he remained the reasonable party. I did not assist the adjustment. Assistance would have required conversations I had already declined at the front door and in every message thread since.
At home the master bedroom was finally cleared of the shared arrangement. I moved my clothes, replaced the bedding, and treated the room as a space that belonged to the present rather than the previous version of the marriage. The guest room returned to its original function. The ring came off on a Tuesday evening without ceremony and went into a small box in a drawer I did not open again for weeks. Symbolism, it turned out, required less time than the password changes had.
