At the dining table I squared the edges of a thick stack of legal papers: a petition for dissolution of marriage, notarized, signed.

I slid the platinum band I hadn’t taken off in twenty years from my finger and set it in the dead center of the petition.

The metal made a small, definite click against the paper. A strange, glacial peace had settled into my bones. My tears had run dry three nights before.

Then I powered my phone down, cutting the last digital tether to my husband, picked up my suitcase, and dropped my house key into the mailbox slot on my way out.

I wasn’t going to my childhood home to weep. I was going to find the lock that matched Vivian’s silver key — and whatever she’d built potent enough to spend her dying breath on.

A cheap motel near the train station became my war room. The vacancy sign flickered red across a cigarette-burned carpet.