Chapter 6

“Go ahead.”

“What do you want? Do you want the marriage back, or do you want the man you thought you married?”

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came out.

“Because those might not be the same thing, honey.”

“I don’t even know if the man I thought I married ever existed,” I said.

Dana shook her head.

“Oh, he existed. That’s what makes it so hard. People aren’t fake. They’re just capable of being two things at once.”

She reached across the table and squeezed my wrist.

“Do me a favor. Whatever you decide, decide it with the lights on.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means don’t stay because you’re scared of the dark. And don’t leave because you’re angry in it.”

I carried that sentence back to my office and set it on my desk like a stone.

I had no idea that in two days, I would need every ounce of the light it demanded.

It happened on the morning of December thirtieth.

Over something as small and boring as a property tax bill.

Household paperwork had always been my job.

It wasn’t glamorous, but I was good at it and privately proud of that.

That morning, I logged into our joint savings account to move money for the payment.

My finger stopped above the mouse.

The balance read:

$23,914.

It should have been $42,414.

I knew that number the way a mother knows her child’s birthday.

I had watched it grow through eleven years of small sacrifices.

Skipped vacations.

Secondhand furniture.

Birthday dinners at home instead of restaurants.

I opened the transaction history.

There it was.

Plain gray text on a white screen.

Transfer out: $18,500.00. December 28. 10:14 a.m. External account ending in 3308.

I clicked the account details.

The attached name was:

Bennett, Daniel R.

I didn’t scream.

I didn’t throw anything.

I sat perfectly still while the office continued around me—a phone ringing, someone laughing by the coffee machine.

I did the math the way you do when your mind is trying to protect you from your heart.

December 28 was the morning after I told him about the attorney.

The morning he said he was “taking a few days off to work on us.”

At 10:14 that morning, I had been in a budget meeting.

I remembered glancing at my phone and texting him:

Need anything from the store on my way home?

He had replied:

Just you. Love you.

The same two words that ended his message on the night he was in a boutique hotel while I was in Boston.

I photographed the screen because I didn’t trust myself to remember what I was seeing.

Then I stepped into the stairwell and called Naomi Brooks, the attorney I had met after the mall.