For now.
There it was.
Not grief. Not guilt. Strategy.
I didn’t touch the envelope. Instead I let my eyes drift over the printed corner where one paper had slid partially free. My name. His. And below them, in smaller type, a phrase that had absolutely no business appearing in quick divorce paperwork.
South Canal Easement Transfer.
My heartbeat stumbled once.
Not because I understood everything. Because I understood enough.
The South Canal parcel was one of the old redevelopment corridors near a sealed freight line beneath downtown, a useless piece of land on paper and a bureaucratic nightmare in reality. Bellucci Civic had tried for years to acquire permanent access rights there and had always met resistance from the city. Too much environmental review. Too much buried infrastructure. Too many old records that didn’t quite match.
Why attach that to a divorce?
Unless this wasn’t just about ending a marriage.
Unless I was being moved like a document.
“You’ve gone quiet again,” Dominic said.
I lifted the envelope at last, flipped it once, and set it back down.
“I’ll have someone review it.”
“No,” he said, too fast. “It’s straightforward.”
“That sentence alone guarantees it isn’t.”
His mouth hardened. “Don’t make this ugly, Lena.”
A laugh nearly escaped me. Ugly had entered the restaurant wearing his wedding ring.
“I didn’t,” I said. “You brought ugly to dinner.”
The waiter approached with exquisite timing and asked if we would like dessert.
Dominic said no.
I said yes.
The waiter hesitated, then looked at me.
“Chocolate torte,” I said. “And coffee.”
When he left, Dominic stared at me in disbelief. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am going to need dessert,” I said, “because apparently my husband has mistaken my life for a press release.”
His face flushed dark.
He leaned forward, lowered his voice, and said, “You should be very careful tonight.”
I met his eyes.
There it was again. Not sadness. Not even anger.
Warning.
And in that instant, beneath the betrayal, beneath the humiliation, beneath the fact that another woman might be carrying what should have been the future he and I once whispered about in the dark, something else rose cold and clean through me.
Fear.
Not for the marriage.
For the paperwork.
For whatever he needed from me.
Dessert arrived. I ate three bites, tasted none of them, asked for the rest to be boxed, and stood.
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