Upstairs, I could hear Charlotte, our eight-year-old daughter, humming while she drew. She was probably creating another picture of the three of us, a perfect, unbroken circle of a family that, in her mind, still existed. A vice tightened around my chest.

“I’ve been out for six months,” I said, my voice quiet, stripped of any accusation. “I took the desk job you asked for. I’m home every night by six.”

“Six months doesn’t erase eight years of absence,” Christy finally looked at me then, and I saw something in her eyes I’d never detected in a subject before: rehearsed conviction. She had practiced this speech in the mirror. “I want a divorce.”