She called after me, "Can we just talk?"
I said, "Tomorrow." And stared at the ceiling fan until it carved the word plan across my thoughts.
My routine became a war room. At dawn, I opened the shop, brewed the bitter diner coffee I secretly love, and called Lucas Park, an old friend who runs a small electronics store and knows how to make gadgets sing. Lucas didn't judge; he listened.
"I need clarity," I said. "Not rumors. Not guesses. I need facts."
"Voice-activated recorders, a legal GPS on communal property, and a phone backup for cloud accounts you pay for," he said, matter-of-fact. "You sure you want this, Dan? You can't unhear truth."
"Already heard it," I said. "Now I need the timeline."
By lunch, I had the tools in a steady hand. I mirrored the devices tied to our shared accounts. No hacking. No high drama. Just the mundane power of bill-payer admin. I tucked a small recorder in the kitchen—we still had a landline for her grandmother. Slid another into the passenger-side crevice of Brooke's SUV. Set a third in a drawer where late-night whispers go to rest.
I logged into our cloud with our usual password—our wedding date, a memory that used to be sweet and now felt like a sticky note on a door that never locked. Her inbox coughed up a hidden folder: weeks of messages with Tyler.
The Red Rock Vista Resort. Two nights, his idea. "Let's ease Danny in," Tyler wrote. "He's pragmatic."
Pragmatic. Like I was a spreadsheet they could budget their romance on.
I called Victor Reed, my attorney. He's one of those patient men who never misses a comma, but will fight like a thunderstorm when asked.