I stood on the porch of the home I had paid into for eight years, locked out of it by a four-digit code, and I did not pound on the door, and I did not call him screaming.

I lifted my phone, and I took a clear photograph of the little lit keypad that had just refused me, and I saved it.

And then I walked back to my car.

My son, Toby, was six years old, and he was safe that night at my mother’s house in Irvine, which was the only fact I needed in order to think clearly.

I drove to a bright, twenty-four-hour diner, and I sat in a vinyl booth under the fluorescent lights, and I dialed a legal advocate’s office and left a message that I would firm up in the morning. I want to file for divorce.