Every other Saturday since March, I said. That is a lot of things that do not mean anything.

He tried to step closer, reaching out a hand as if he could touch my arm and reset the clock back to this morning before I opened that glovebox. Don’t do this, he said. We have a life together. We built this.

You built it, I told him, and then you pawned my ring to pay for a room on Route 9.

He looked at the floor. He didn’t deny it. He didn’t have any more stories about traffic or hardware stores or misplaced jewelry. He just stood there looking old and small in the middle of the bedroom we shared for decades.

I walked past him down the stairs. I didn’t pack a bag because this was my house and my kitchen and my life before he decided to split it down the middle. I walked out to the truck, opened the glovebox one last time, and dropped the keycard onto the passenger seat.

When Marshall came down the stairs a few minutes later, I was sitting at the kitchen table with my phone out, calling a lawyer whose number I got from a neighbor last year when her husband left. Marshall stood in the doorway for a long time, watching me talk, but he didn’t say another word.