Patricia’s first consultation was free.

Three legal aid offices in that county will tell you the same thing on a telephone for nothing at all, in about four minutes.

Four minutes on a telephone on Tuesday morning, and my children do not sleep on cushions in Bridgeport, and I do not sit in a Honda working out parking lots.

I have had two years and a good therapist on this question and the answer is not stupidity and it is not shock, although both were present.

The answer is that for eighteen years, in every domain that involved money or contracts or institutions, the arrangement in our marriage was that Julian knew and I did not, and that arrangement was not imposed on me, it was convenient, and I had leaned on it happily.