“You’ve been fixing my life privately, behind my back, for months,” I said.

“I think we’re past private.”

“We’re married!” he said, as though the word were a claim on me, a lever that would still work.

“Not for very much longer,” I said, and my attorney stepped forward from the edge of the room and handed him the divorce petition, to go with the rest.

And my mother began, finally, to weep — but I watched her carefully, and I saw exactly what she was weeping about.

She was not weeping for me, or for Daniel, or for the sold motorcycle, or for the baby, or for anything that had actually been broken.