My wife left the night I lost my job, telling me, "I married a provider, not a problem" — three days later, she was pounding on my door, demanding, "How long were you planning to keep this from me?"

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"What are you saying, exactly?" she asked.

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"I'm saying I want a divorce," I said, the words considerably steadier coming out than I expected them to be, given how thoroughly they'd been building over the past three days.

"Weldon, you can't be serious. Over one bad reaction?"

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"It wasn't one bad reaction," I said. "It was six years of comfortable assumptions finally getting tested, and failing completely, the first single time either of us actually needed the other one to show up without a financial safety net attached."

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She left that afternoon, considerably quieter than the fury she'd arrived with, the printed papers still sitting on my coffee table where she'd left them.

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I filed for divorce the following week, working with an attorney through a straightforward process, given how clearly our finances and assets had always been structured in my name from the beginning of our marriage.

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I accepted the Draymond position two weeks later, a considerable step up from my role at Halbrook, and used part of my severance to finally take the solo trip to the mountains I'd been quietly wanting to take for years, something Delphine had never once shown any interest in joining me for.