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He exhaled slowly. “Depends what you mean by ‘partial.’”

I started listing the inventory, my tone going flat and clinical as I went down the mental list. “L-shaped sofa, sectional, gray. Seats five. 65-inch OLED TV mounted on the living room wall. Washer, dryer, both purchased two years ago. Microwave, toaster, coffeemaker, blender. Dining chairs—six of them, upholstered, bought last year. Curtains in the living room and dining room. Area rugs. Some lamps. A few bookcases. I’ll handle my personal things separately.”

His tone shifted. The casual, sleepy cadence sharpened. This wasn’t drama anymore. It was logistics.

“We can do noon,” he said. “Rush fee applies. And we’ll need you to be very clear on what’s going and what’s staying. We don’t do domestic… disputes.”

“That won’t be a problem,” I said. “Everything that’s mine will be clearly labeled.”

“Alright,” he replied. “Text me the address. We’ll be there at twelve on the dot.”

I thanked him and hung up, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my fingertips.

For the next few hours, I worked.

If you’d seen me then, moving through the house with a stack of Post-it notes and a folder under my arm, you might have thought I was staging it for an open house. In a way, I was—but not for buyers. I was staging it for extraction.

I pulled open my filing cabinet and took out the folder labeled HOME. Over the years, I’d kept every receipt, every invoice, every email confirming a purchase. Not because I foresaw this exact moment—no one’s paranoia is that accurate—but because I’m the kind of person who documents things. Organized. Logical. The kind of person who wakes at five a.m. to code with coffee.

I spread the papers out on my bed: receipts for the sofa, the TV, the washer and dryer, the set of dining chairs I’d found on sale after spending a week comparing reviews. Printouts of emails about the roof repairs, the repainting, the appliance installs. My name on all of them. My credit card numbers, the last four digits familiar and oddly intimate.

I moved through the house, placing small Post-it notes on everything that fell under the umbrella of “mine.”

Mine on the sofa arm.

Mine on the base of the TV.

Mine on the washer lid, the dryer door.

Mine on the microwave handle, the toaster’s side, the sleek electric kettle Jonathan had once praised as “a decent purchase” in a tone that implied I’d finally done something right.

Mine on the dining chairs, on the living room lamps, on the curtains that softened the harshness of the sunlight in summer.

The house grew a rash of sticky yellow tags, a silent, neon protest.

I left certain things untouched. The dining table, its surface worn but solid, had been my grandfather’s. He’d sanded and refinished it himself before my parents got married, a gift to them and, in his mind, an anchor for the family. That stayed.

The old sideboard in the hallway, its drawers full of mismatched linens and holiday platters, had been my grandmother’s. That stayed too.