My husband files for divorce, and my 6-year old son asks the judge: ‘May I show you something that Mom doesn’t know about, Your Honor?’ The judge nodded. When the video started, the entire courtroom froze in silence.

On the outside of the binder I wrote one sentence: Facts first.

Feelings later.

Then Julian changed the bedroom lock, and feelings came anyway.

PART 8

The new lock was brass, shiny enough to catch the hallway light.

Julian installed it while Noah and I were at the grocery store.

He called it a temporary boundary because, in his words, I had been “rifling through his private things.” His private things were the financial records of a marriage in which he expected me to have no privacy of my own.

My clothes were still inside.