My divorce was finalized seven months after that birthday, and it was, in the end, an almost quiet thing, because there was so little left to fight over.

I asked for no dramatic alimony settlement.

I did not need to, and I did not want to, and it would have missed the point entirely.

I already owned what was rightfully mine — the estate, the controlling interest in the company, the recovered assets.

I demanded only what the financial evidence justified, no more and no less, because I had not come through all of it to become greedy at the end, and because taking only what was documented and lawful was itself a kind of statement about who I was and who Preston was.

He had taken what was not his.