part 2 Two months after divorcing my wife, I found her sitting alone in a hospital hallway wearing a patient gown

from her shoulder, and her house keys were clenched in her fist.

“Tom,” she whispered, “Ethan changed the code.”

My chest tightened. “What?”

She swallowed hard. “He said this house belongs to him now. He said I should leave before you got home because I’ve been ‘living off his future’ long enough.”

For a moment, I could not breathe.

Ethan was our only son. Thirty-two years old. Married to Ashley, a woman who had never once offered to wash a dish in this house but always talked about what “we” should renovate after Linda and I were gone.

I walked