Amanda understood immediately. "Arrange it through counsel."
Two days later, Kimberly agreed to be away for several hours. Roger drove to Worthington alone.
At 2:14 p.m., he parked the old Ford Explorer in the driveway. He sat there for a moment. Then he walked to the front door.
His key still worked.
Roger stepped inside.
The living room was quiet. The same staircase stood ahead of him. For the first time since 9:17 that Tuesday night, Roger entered the house without needing to leave quickly.
Now he had to decide whether it was still something worth fighting to keep.
Roger closed the front door behind him. The lock clicked.
For a moment, he stood exactly where he had stood the night his marriage changed.
The living room looked almost identical. Same gray sectional. Same oak coffee table.
Same floor lamp Kimberly had ordered online because she said the old one made the room look like a dentist's office.
The wine glasses were gone.
Of course they were.
Roger looked toward the staircase. He could still place Jason there without effort.
White shirt. One side untucked. Hand at his cuff.
Roger looked away. He had not come to reconstruct that night.
He had come to decide what the house meant now.
The afternoon sun fell across the hardwood floor. Roger walked toward the kitchen.
His hand touched the edge of the granite island. He remembered installing the pendant lights above it.
The electrician had quoted $900. Roger had done most of the preparation himself and paid him only for the wiring.
Kimberly had complained that the job took two weekends. Then she loved the result.
Roger opened one cabinet.
Coffee mugs.
Dinner plates.
A chipped blue bowl they had owned since their first apartment.
He closed it.
Nothing in the house looked dramatic enough to contain the end of an 11-year marriage. That bothered him.
He walked into the dining room. A shallow scratch crossed the hardwood near the wall.
Roger knew exactly where it came from.
Seven years earlier, they had moved the dining table to make room for Thanksgiving. Roger had lifted his side. Kimberly had dragged hers.
The table leg cut across the floor. They had argued for 20 minutes.
Later that night, Kimberly had found him trying to polish the mark.
She laughed. "It's a floor, Roger. People are supposed to live on it."
He had never fixed the scratch completely.
Now he crouched and ran one finger across it. The memory did not make him angry.
That was almost worse.
Not every part of the marriage had been false. Roger knew that.
He refused to rewrite 11 years simply because the final chapters were ugly.
There had been good mornings. Vacations. Birthdays.
Inside jokes. Sunday grocery runs. Nights when Kimberly fell asleep against his shoulder.
Years when Roger believed the woman beside him was building the same life he was.
Those things had happened.
So had Jason.
Both could be true.
Roger stood. He moved through the first floor.
In the hallway near the kitchen, pencil marks remained on the inside edge of a door frame.
Emily, 7.
Emily, 8.
Emily, 9.
His niece. Megan's daughter had insisted Roger measure her every Thanksgiving.
The nine-year mark was slightly crooked because Emily had refused to remove her sneakers.