The cheapest two-bedroom rental inside the West Hartford school district ran twenty-four hundred dollars a month.

Grant’s sixty thousand dollars would barely pay for two years of rent and utilities inside that district.

With no access to our joint savings and no corporate paycheck, I’d be forced into a cheaper rental neighborhood in Hartford proper once the sixty thousand ran out.

The minute I signed a lease outside the West Hartford line, clause forty-two would automatically take away my physical custody and hand Sophie back to Grant.

The sixty thousand dollars wasn’t a generous compromise or a peace offering.