Chapter 6: Separation
The temporary separation became formal on paper the following week.
I instructed counsel to draft a postnuptial clarification of separate property and a schedule for disclosure of marital accounts. Daniel called it a declaration of war. I called it a translation of what the gala had already made obvious: access to my capital was not a marital folk tradition. It was a set of signatures that could be withheld.
He stayed in the city apartment. I remained at the cabin except for foundation meetings and the appointments that required my presence in town. The mark on my cheek disappeared completely. The memory of the sound in the ballroom did not. I used it the way I used any other data point—rarely, precisely, and without performance.
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Vanessa’s name surfaced once more in a gossip column that misspelled the foundation and overstated the slap. Counsel sent a short correction regarding the foundation’s role. We did not litigate Vanessa. She had been a catalyst, not the substance. The substance was a husband who had allowed the room to believe I might be an interloper at my own table.
Daniel requested dinner “to speak as adults.” I agreed to a conference room at the firm’s outside counsel’s office. Adults, in my definition, required witnesses and minutes.
