“Then whether you want a divorce is not the first issue. Understanding your legal position is.”

That sentence gave me something solid to stand on. She handed me a checklist. Tax returns. Bank statements. Business ownership records. Property deeds.

Insurance policies. Retirement accounts. Loan applications. Credit-card statements. Any messages related to finances.

“Do not access anything you are not legally authorized to see,” she said. “Do not guess passwords. Do not move money. Preserve every record you already have.”

I went home and quietly began collecting documents. Daniel noticed nothing. For reasons I couldn’t explain, that hurt almost as much as everything else.

For twelve years I had kept every important document in our lives organized, and Daniel had trusted the paperwork would always be there without once thinking about who kept it that way.