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I read three. Three was enough. I closed the laptop. I walked to the kitchen.
I filled a glass of water, drank it standing at the sink, and stared at the faucet for a long time.
Then I called Simone. “I need you to recommend a lawyer,” I said, “not for advice, for action.”
Simone didn’t gasp, didn’t ask a hundred questions. She said, “I’ve got somebody. How soon?”
“This week,” I said. Her name was Viviane, a 47-year-old divorce attorney with copper-brown skin, wire-rimmed glasses, close-cut natural hair, and the calm authority of a woman who had seen every variation of this story and won most of them.
She wore tailored suits in charcoal and navy and spoke in complete, precise sentences that left no room for confusion.
At our first meeting, I told her everything. The apartment, mine, purchased before the marriage, no name added to the deed.
The inheritance from my grandfather that had funded the down payment, documented. My income, my savings, my assets, all carefully maintained in separate accounts from the beginning of our marriage because my mother, God bless her, had told me when I was 19, “Keep your own money, always.
Dastar. Vivian set down her pen and looked at me over her glasses. Mrs. Carter, she said, you [snorts] have protected yourself better than most of my clients who come to me after the fact.
I didn’t plan for divorce, I told her honestly. I planned for myself. She nodded slowly.
Then let’s make sure the outcome reflects that. Derek did not know I’d contacted Vivian.
Gloria did not know. Patrice did not know, and the apartment, the home we had lived in for 4 years that Gloria walked through like she owned every corner of was entirely, legally, solely mine.
The clock was ticking. They just couldn’t hear it yet. I gave Derek the chance to tell me himself.