Angela had already tried to access the home equity line. The freeze had gone through overnight. The transaction was declined at 7:52 a.m.
Patricia’s voice was even and professional when she told me this. She has been doing family law in Atlanta for nineteen years and nothing surprises her.
She said Angela’s attorney — a man named Fowler, who works out of a shared office on Peachtree — had already reached out requesting a call.
Patricia said, “They’re moving fast because they’re scared.”
She said to let her handle it.
I did.
I went back to the Hargrove site.
I put on my boots and my hard hat and I told my crew foreman, a man named Terrence, to start on the east foundation pour and I did not think about Angela or Marcus for five hours.
That is the truth.
The mediation was scheduled for a Wednesday, three weeks out.
Angela showed up in a gray blazer I had never seen before. Fowler sat beside her with a leather portfolio and a confident posture that lasted about twelve minutes.
Patricia laid out the transfers first.
Sixty dollars. A hundred and twenty. Forty-one thousand, two hundred and sixty in total, over fourteen months, moved from the household account I had funded entirely with my income while Angela worked part-time at a dental office in Kennesaw and claimed she was saving for a kitchen renovation we discussed twice and never scheduled.
Fowler started to say something about intent.
Patricia slid a printed bank statement across the table.
She pointed to a withdrawal of four thousand dollars from the joint account Marcus and Angela had opened, dated nine days before Angela had told me she paid to repair a water heater at a rental property her mother owned in Chattanooga.
There was no rental property.
Angela’s mother lives in a two-bedroom condo in Dunwoody and has for sixteen years.
Fowler asked for a five-minute recess.
He came back and said his client was prepared to discuss settlement.
I looked at Angela once during the mediation.
She was looking at the table.
She didn’t look up.
The settlement was finalized six weeks later.
I kept the house on Clover Ridge Drive.
I kept the F-150.
Angela received a sum that reflected her portion of marital assets, minus the forty-one thousand that Patricia had successfully argued constituted fraudulent dissipation of marital property. The fraud claim against Marcus meant he was personally liable for the portion of those funds he had received or facilitated. His attorney negotiated a repayment agreement. Marcus sold his motorcycle and two weeks of vacation he had banked at his job at the Cobb County water authority to make the first payment.
I was not there for that part.
I did not need to be.
The divorce was final on a Tuesday in October.
It was fifty-four degrees and raining lightly.
I drove home after the courthouse and changed out of my dress shirt and put on a flannel and walked through every room in the house.
It is a good house.
The bones are solid.
I built the deck off the back myself, four summers ago.
I stood on it for a while that evening, watching the water come off the eaves, and I thought about the anniversary card I had left faceup on the counter. I never did find out if she read it.
At some point I went inside and made coffee and called my brother Kevin.
He answered on the second ring.
I told him it was done.
He said, “Good.”
We talked for about an hour about nothing in particular.
