She opened his bottom dresser drawer, where he kept the files he pretended were organized. Inside, beneath a stack of old W-2s, she found a folder labeled in his handwriting: HOUSE. Inside the folder: a notice of default from the mortgage servicer. A letter about a short sale. Correspondence with Simone Langford Realty. A printed spreadsheet of their accounts, balances highlighted in yellow where the yellow meant danger. A handwritten list of what he had sold—his watch, the spare car, the dining set they had bought after Amara was born—and what the sales had bought them: three more months of mortgage payments, Amara's after-school care, the appearance of a life that had not yet cracked.
Nia sat on the edge of the bed with the folder in her lap and the separation notice in her other hand and understood, with a clarity that felt like nausea, that the stranger downstairs was not the worst of it. The worst of it was that her husband had been drowning in the dark so that she could keep swimming toward a light he believed she needed more than truth.
She went downstairs carrying the folder.
Marcus saw it in her hands and went still. Simone saw it and closed her eyes briefly, as if a prayer she did not believe in had failed.
Nia set the folder on the coffee table between them and sat in the armchair she had always claimed as hers. She crossed her legs. She looked at Marcus. She looked at Simone. She waited until the silence became a room of its own.
"Start," she said, "at the beginning. And do not skip the parts that make you look bad."