The night my son asked what he thought was a simple bedtime question, my marriage ended before the sun came up.
The house had settled into that familiar California quiet that only came after midnight routines were done. The dishwasher hummed in the kitchen. A baby monitor crackled softly from the nursery across the hall. Outside, distant traffic from the freeway rolled through our San Diego neighborhood like a far-off tide. It was the kind of ordinary soundscape I had always associated with safety, with routine, with a life that—at least on the surface—looked stable.
