The most powerful thing I owned, in that moment, was my own restraint.

Faye had actually argued with me about it, in the cafeteria, over the manifest.

There were gray areas, she said — items bought jointly, gifts, things where a good lawyer could make a case either way.

Take them, she said; make them fight for the scraps.

I told her no.

I told her to take only what was documented, provably, unarguably mine, and to leave every gray-area item behind, and to leave every item of his untouched down to the protein powder in the pantry.