I worked two jobs to help fulfill my husband’s dream of becoming a doctor — at his graduation, he handed me divorce papers, but just as I was walking away, one of his classmates said, “Before you leave, there’s something you should know.”

Nathan stared at the phone.

Daniel didn’t move.

He just stood there, phone raised, the red bar of the recording still running.

“Turn that off,” Nathan said.

“It’s already done,” Daniel said.

“I can stop it now or I can keep going.

Your choice.”

“You had no right—”

“You handed divorce papers to your wife at your graduation ceremony,” Daniel said.

“In a public courtyard.

In front of witnesses.” He lowered the phone but didn’t put it away.

“I had every right.”

Eleanor was very still beside her son.

Gerald had taken another small step back.

He was now standing slightly apart from the family group, his hands in his pockets, looking at the ground.

Nathan turned back to me.

The hardness in his face was still there, but something underneath it was beginning to loosen.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Right now?” I said.