Kevin’s voice caught on the second syllable of “apartment,” as if the word itself had splinters. “Who is this apartment for?” he asked, but we all knew he was really asking, “When did my life get planned without me?” Tiffany’s phone buzzed again—Marco: We need to lock this down, Kev. Your mom will come around—and I watched the color drain from my son’s face as the timeline rearranged itself in his head. The late-night “budget talks.” The sudden pressure to move Christmas here “for the kids.” The real estate listings he’d never actually seen but had apparently already agreed to. Tiffany moved quickly, the way people do when they realize they’ve been caught mid-theft: she reached for tone, for volume, for the old script where I was the unreasonable one. But the printer didn’t care about anyone’s version. It just kept pushing out proof. Kevin read the clause about “eventual transfer of primary residence” twice, then looked at me like I was the only solid object in a room made of fog. When he finally put the pages down, the space he left between himself and Tiffany was small enough to miss if you weren’t looking. I was looking. I heard the tear in the air when she realized the person she’d underestimated had been quietly archiving every promi… Continues…