“And it’s my summer cottage, not his. Nate always hated it. I don’t know why I listened to him in the first place about selling it.”

Trish looks at me for a long time, not blinking, and takes another healthy sip of her manhattan. “Give me a few minutes,” she says. “Let me call his attorney.” She stops. “He does owe you, and I’ll make sure they know that.”

As she walks away, I take a sip of my drink, and my head grows light. The world seems to fall away in sections right in front of my eyes—the walls of the restaurant first, followed by the tables, then the waiters and the diners, before the buildings outside slip into the ground, leaving me alone with only the sound of my heartbeat in my ears.

What am I doing? Trish is right. I could be making the biggest mistake of my life.

“Well,” Trish says, walking back to the table startling me, “Nate doesn’t want you making a big deal to the university, especially with his tenure review coming up and since Evan is a student there.” Trish winks. “I might have made it seem as if you were going to storm into the chancellor’s office or call the student newspaper if you didn’t get your way.” She continues. “And Illinois is a dual classification state. As I told you before, it separates marital property from separate property. Your parents left you the cottage. It’s yours legally. It’s separate property. It’s not Nate’s. So he has no rights to it.”

She continues. “But the mortgage on your Chicago home is in both names. It’s marital property. Illinois is an equitable distribution state, but equitable does not mean equal, or even half, but rather what the circuit court considers fair. The court divides the marital estate without regard to marital misconduct.”

“Where are you going with this?” I ask nervously.

She smiles. “You have a deal. Nate will continue to give you two-plus years of support, only until Evan graduates. But he now wants two-thirds of the cash from the sale of the Lake Forest house.”

I begin to protest, but Trish holds up a hand. “Hear me out. I can contest that, and chances are you’d likely get a fifty-fifty split of the home, if not more, but then they could contest the level of Nate’s support, and I know how much that means to you moving forward. It extends your runway, gives you a little more time to get the plane off the ground.” She continues. “And Evan goes to school free because Nate works there, so they have that in their back pocket to argue against the level of support.”

I take a deep breath as Trish takes a seat.

Trish raises her glass. “Cheers!” she says. “I still think you’re crazy, but I’m so proud of you, Adie Lou.”