I called my bank.

I spent hours going through the old family photo albums my mother had sent over years ago and never asked after, boxes of them in the closet, sepia faces I had glanced at once and forgotten.

I was preparing.

Somewhere in the second night, feeding Leander in the dark while the house slept around me, I understood that I was no longer waiting to find out whether my marriage would survive.

I was waiting to find out how it would end.

It is a strange thing, to make phone calls that quietly dismantle your own life while your husband sleeps twenty feet away, certain he is the one in control.