The mediator cleared her throat and slid the final document toward me with both hands, careful and neutral and maybe, for half a second, sorry. I had seen that expression before, the quiet softness people wear when they think a woman is about to lose everything and are trying not to stare at the moment it becomes official.
I did not break.
My name is Elena Mercer. I am thirty four years old. I am the mother of two children, Mia and Leo, and until that Tuesday morning I had spent nearly a decade building a life around a man who could no longer look me in the eye without calculating what my silence might cost him.
I signed exactly where the yellow tabs told me to. My hand did not shake.
