The negotiation took eleven weeks and it was, for the first nine of them, entirely pleasant.

That is the part nobody believes.

Christopher was generous, in the way a man is generous when he believes he is being generous with things that are already his.

He offered me the apartment.

He offered a lump sum.

His attorney used the word “clean” about nine times.

What he was doing — and Deborah identified it in the first exchange of letters — was buying speed.

He wanted it signed before the babies came, because the optics of a man finalizing a divorce two weeks after his girlfriend gives birth are worse than the optics of a man who was already divorced.