Then she changed the subject and hung up.
That conversation lasted maybe twenty seconds.
Later, divorce paperwork forced everything into the open.
Ohio required financial disclosures.
Income.
Assets.
Debt.
Documentation.
I filled mine out at the kitchen table over several evenings.
My route had grossed $418,000 in 2025.
I attached tax returns, ledgers, and the loan papers from 2011 proving I had purchased the business four years before marrying Buffford.
His attorney received the disclosure.
That was when Buffford discovered he had spent eleven years assuming my income was roughly the same as his.
He had told his attorney I probably cleared seventy or eighty thousand.
He had never asked.
In early October, he came back to the house.
He stood in the kitchen touching the back of a chair without sitting.
“Maybe we moved too fast.”
“What moved too fast?”
“The divorce.”
“Why?”
He hesitated.
Then:
“Mom’s mortgage.”
That told me everything.
The arrangements had become visible.
Rolene was telling people I was punishing Marcel.
Buffford asked whether I could at least keep paying the school through June.
“It would be better for the kid.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
He didn’t answer.
So I told him about the storage unit.
$240 a month.
Since 2013.