I did not explain.
He walked toward the window, then back again.
His anger had always depended on movement—doors closing hard, drawers opening harder, a phone placed on a counter with enough force to make everyone notice.
This time, I watched without reacting.
“The condo belongs to a company,” he said.
“It isn’t mine.”
“Then why did you know exactly which property my attorney meant?”
He stopped moving.
“I assumed.”
“You assumed correctly.”
He pulled out a chair but remained standing behind it.
“You’ve let Dela fill your head with nonsense.”
Dela’s name gave him away again.
I had never told him she was helping me.
“How do you know I spoke to Dela?”
His mouth opened, then closed.
He finally sat.
“This is getting ugly,” he said.
“I didn’t want it to be ugly.”
“You handed me divorce papers while I was cooking dinner.”
“I was trying to be civil.”
“You undervalued the house, excluded property, and asked me to waive further financial claims.”
“It was a starting point.”
“You called it fair.”
For the first time that night, he looked away.
The next morning, his lawyer sent a revised letter.
It described the condo as an investment belonging to a separate business entity and claimed my husband held no personal ownership interest.
My attorney read it twice.
“Interesting,” she said.
“What?”
“They answered a question we did not ask.
We requested documents.
They sent an explanation instead.”
She prepared formal discovery requests for bank statements, tax returns, loan applications, property records, and communications related to the company.
My husband resisted almost everything.
First, he claimed the requests were excessive.
Then he said certain documents were unavailable.
After that, his lawyer argued that the company’s records were confidential.
Each objection created another question.
Meanwhile, I continued living in the house with him.
We moved through separate rooms like employees assigned to the same building.
He slept in the guest room.
I studied at the dining table.
We spoke through attorneys whenever possible.
The Christmas tree remained in the living room until mid-January because neither of us wanted to be the one who dismantled it.
One night, I found him standing in front of it with his phone in his hand.
The colored lights reflected in the dark screen.
“You could stop this,” he said.
“Stop what?”
“The legal war.”
“You started it.”
“I offered you the house buyout, your car, and half the savings.”
“Half the savings you disclosed.”
His face tightened.
“You were never interested in the finances before.”
“That was useful to you.”
