"That's not my problem anymore," I replied without sympathy. "You're an adult who makes her own choices, remember? You wanted to live your life without considering my feelings, and now you get to find out what that actually looks like." "David, please," she pleaded.
"We can work this out. I made a mistake, but—" "You made a choice," I said firmly. "And I made mine." I hung up and watched her through the window as she stood there, perhaps finally understanding that the man she'd married was not the man she'd betrayed.
She made several more calls, probably to friends or family looking for somewhere to go. Then she loaded the garbage bags into the Uber and disappeared into the night. An hour later, she was back, standing at my office door. She looked smaller somehow, diminished by the reality of consequences she'd never imagined would apply to her.
"Can we talk?" she asked quietly. "Face-to-face, like adults?" I let her in and watched her settle into the client chair across from my desk. The same place where clients sat when they needed my help protecting their assets from unfaithful spouses.
"I don't understand how you could do this," she began. "We've been married for seven years. We built a life together." "No, we didn't," I corrected her.
"I built a life, and you lived in it. There's a difference." "That's not true," she protested. I opened a file folder and spread its contents across my desk.
Credit card statements, email printouts, receipts for purchases I'd never seen, evidence of relationships I'd never known existed. "You've been having affairs for months, Delaney, maybe years," I said, watching her face. "This weekend wasn't an aberration. It was an escalation."
She stared at the papers, her face cycling through emotions. Surprise, anger, resignation, and finally, something that might have been relief. "You went through my things," she said accusingly. "I went through our things," I corrected.
"This is my house, my computer, my credit cards that paid for your deceptions. You forfeited any expectation of privacy when you decided to systematically betray our marriage." "So, what happens now?" she asked quietly. "Now you learn what it's like to live without the safety net you took for granted," I explained.
"The prenup is clear. In cases of adultery, you receive no spousal support, no property division, no claim on assets acquired during the marriage." "You're going to leave me with nothing?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. "I'm going to leave you with exactly what you brought to our marriage: nothing," I stated matter-of-factly.
"You chose to destroy what we built together, and now you get to experience the consequences of that choice." She was quiet for a long moment, staring at the evidence of her own betrayal. When she looked up, her eyes were clearer than I'd seen them in years. "You really planned for this, didn't you?" she asked.