"This is insane," he said. "You're punishing her because you're lonely and you can't stand that we have a life."
The sentence landed in the kitchen like a plate smashed for effect. Sloan did not correct him. She drank it. I felt something in my chest close — not break, not yet, but close the way a door closes when you finally understand it was never a door so much as a wall with hinges.
"Get out of my kitchen," I said quietly. "Both of you. I have packing to do."
I packed Sloan's cosmetics first.
Not her clothes. Not her shoes. The cosmetics — the glass serums, the jade roller, the twelve shades of lipstick, the brushes in their leather roll, the entire expensive altar she had built on my marble bathroom counter. I put them into two cardboard boxes I found in the garage beside Walter's old camping equipment. I carried the boxes into the hallway outside the master bedroom and set them on the floor against the wall. I did not knock. I did not ask. I installed, that same morning, two new deadbolts — one on my study, one on the guest room that had become my bedroom — with a drill I had to watch three YouTube videos to use correctly. My hands shook. The screws went in crooked and then straight. When Sloan came out of the master and saw the boxes, she laughed once, short and ugly.
"What is this, a tantrum?"
"This is your bathroom migrating back to your side of the house," I said. "The deadbolts are for rooms that are no longer shared. If you need something from the study, you may knock. If I am not there, you may wait."