I sent the photographs immediately. Loretta called her divorce attorney, who called Desmond’s attorney, who called Desmond. That was the phone call that sent him running across my lawn. It was not conscience or shame about me. He had suddenly realized that he had handed his wife’s lawyer a perfect case for malicious property damage and trespass, recorded on video, just one week before their settlement hearing.

The concrete came out that afternoon. Desmond paid for the removal himself, and he paid for my slashed tires too. Loretta’s attorney had folded everything into one demand letter, and Desmond signed rather than fight it. The driveway was finally clear, and the workers disappeared almost as quickly as they had arrived.

I expected to feel triumphant, but I did not. Instead, I felt strangely sorry for him. I watched a man discover that the woman he had spent a year pretending did not exist still held the legal ground beneath his feet. He moved out in the spring, and the house was eventually sold. Loretta came by once to collect the last of her belongings, and afterward we sat at my kitchen table drinking coffee.

She told me Desmond had never once let her drive during their thirty-one years together. Not the truck. Not anything. He always said, “Women can’t drive.” Suddenly, I understood that his cruel little sentence had never really been about me. It was the only weapon he had left, aimed at the nearest woman behind a steering wheel because the woman he had used it against for three decades had finally driven away. Loretta got her own license at fifty-nine, the year after she left him. I still take my careful little Chevrolet out every morning. The driveway is clear now, and every so often, I think about Loretta and smile.