For the first time, I saw a kind of power unlike the one Vance admired: power used to create a fair process instead of erase it.

The discovery hurt anyway.

I had known my husband was careless with my feelings.

I hadn’t expected to see his ambition threaded through payments to an unfamiliar business whose existence he’d never mentioned at home.

I kept the statements in a folder on my desk beside Oliver’s feeding schedule.

Some days it felt impossible that a life could contain both a newborn’s tiny socks and records of a collapsing marriage.

But there they were, side by side.