Part 6
The legal documents arrived on Friday afternoon, delivered not by a friendly county official but by a courier with a sour expression.
Travis’s lawyer was demanding "immediate temporary occupancy" and a full accounting of all marital assets, claiming that my sudden locking out of his client had caused emotional distress and financial hardship. The letter was full of grand, aggressive legal terms designed to frighten me into reopening the door.
I didn't get scared. I called Sarah.
Sarah had been my best friend since nursing school, and her older brother, Michael, was one of the sharpest divorce attorneys in the city. Within an hour, Michael was sitting at my kitchen island, a cup of black coffee in his hand, looking over the demand letter.
"He’s fishing," Michael said, tossing the paper onto the granite counter. "He knows he has no right to the property deed, so he’s trying to argue that by living here and contributing to household expenses, he created an implied co-ownership."
"He didn't contribute to the expenses," I said, pulling up my bank app on my laptop. "Look at the records, Michael. Travis paid the utility bills, yes. But the mortgage, the property taxes, the homeowners insurance—every single large payment came directly from my checking account, funded by my shifts and my dad’s retirement payout."
Michael smiled, a slow, predatory expression that made me very glad he was on my side.
"And what about the smart home footage you mentioned?"
I opened the cloud storage for the security system. I hadn't just saved the video from the night of the housewarming party. I had gone back through the logs for the past three months.
The camera over the garage showed Travis’s car pulling in at 2:00 a.m. on nights he said he was at regional conferences.
The camera in the pantry showed Jenna walking through my kitchen in her bathrobe while I was working a night shift at the intensive care unit. It showed Diane sitting at my table, pointing at my walls, telling a contractor where she wanted to knock down the partition to create an open-concept dining room.
They hadn't just been having a party. They had been planning a renovation.
"This is golden," Michael murmured, scrolling through the timestamps. "They were treating this house like a foregone conclusion. Travis was essentially preparing to strip your assets before even filing for a separation."
He looked up at me, his eyes serious.
"Natalie, they want a fight because they think you’re a tired nurse who will break under the pressure. Do you want to settle this quietly, or do you want to finish it?"
May you like
I looked toward the downstairs bedroom, where I could hear the faint sound of my father laughing at a television program, safe and warm.
"I don't want a settlement, Michael," I said. "I want them gone from my life forever."
