Chapter 4: The Woman He Left Behind
Her name was Catherine Marsh, but she introduced herself as Cat.
She was forty-four.
Dark circles under steady eyes.
A coat that had seen too many winters.
She walked into the cathedral the way people do when they are braced for something to go wrong—shoulders slightly forward, chin level, ready.
She stopped when she saw me.
"You're her," she said.
"The one he was going to marry today."
"I was," I said.
"I'm Elise."
Cat looked around the cathedral—the flowers still on the pews, the candles still burning at the altar, the guests mostly gone now except for a few who lingered near the doors.
"I almost didn't come," she said.
"I thought—I thought maybe I had the wrong man.
Maybe I was wrong about the photograph."
"You weren't wrong," I said.
She exhaled slowly.
"How long did you know?"
"About the marriage certificate?
Seven months." I gestured toward the front pew.
"Do you want to sit down?"
She sat.
I sat beside her.
"He told me he was a consultant," Cat said.
"International work.
That's why he was away so much.
That's why I couldn't always reach him." She looked at her hands.
"I believed that for two years."
"What changed?"
"A woman called me.
She wouldn't give her name.
She just said, 'Your husband is engaged to someone else in New York.
Her name is Elise Hargrove.
Look up her father's company.'" Cat paused.
"I looked it up."
"And you found Grace," I said.
"She found me, actually.
Three months ago.
She said you were building a case and you needed me to be willing to testify." Cat looked up.
"I said yes before she finished the sentence."
I was quiet for a moment.
"He hurt you," I said.
It wasn't a question.
Cat's jaw tightened.
"Not the way he hurt you.
Not—" She stopped.
She had seen the photographs in the folder, or heard about them.
"He never hjt me.
But he took everything I had saved.
Cleaned out the joint account the week before he disappeared.
Eighty-three thousand dollars." Her voice was flat and precise, the way voices get when a fact has been repeated so many times it no longer has the power to sting.
"I had to sell the house.
I moved in with my sister.
I spent two years trying to find him."
"And now you have," I said.
"And now I have." She looked toward the side door.
"Is he really going to prison?"
"The federal prosecutor thinks so.
The bigamy charge is the least of it.
The securities fraud goes back eight years.
He was using shell companies to siphon investor funds.
Several of the men in this room today were his victims."
Cat was quiet.
"He picked me because of my father's company," I said.
"The board seat.
The shares.
He needed a legitimate marriage to trigger the asset clause in my father's estate."
"He picked me because I had savings and no family nearby to ask questions," Cat said.
We sat with that for a moment.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"I'm sorry it happened to you first and no one stopped him."
Cat turned to look at me.
Her eyes were dry.
"You stopped him."
"We stopped him."
She nodded slowly.
Then she reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a folded envelope.
She held it for a moment before handing it to me.
"I brought this in case you needed more evidence," she said.
"It's a letter he wrote me.
Two weeks before he disappeared.
He said he was going to a conference in London.
He said he'd be back in ten days." She paused.
"The postmark is New York."
I took the envelope carefully.
"Grace will want this," I said.
"I know.
That's why I brought it." Cat stood up.
She straightened her coat.
"What happens now?
To you, I mean."
"I go home," I said.
"I have a meeting with the estate attorneys on Monday.
The asset transfer agreement is void.
My father's shares stay with me."
"And the company?"
"Stays in the family," I said.
"Where it was always supposed to be."
Cat picked up her bag.
She looked at me one more time—a long, careful look, the kind that takes inventory.
"You were braver than I was," she said.
"You drove fourteen hours," I said.
"Don't sell yourself short."
She almost smiled.
She walked toward the main doors.
I watched her go.
Grace appeared at my elbow.
"The prosecutor's office called while you were talking.
They want a formal statement this afternoon."
"I'll be there," I said.
"There's something else." Grace's voice shifted—just slightly.
Enough for me to notice.
I looked at her.
"Adrian's attorney—the one who left early," Grace said.
"He didn't go home.
He went to the Blackwell Group offices.
Security footage shows him in the server room for eleven minutes before building management locked him out."
My stomach tightened.
"The financial records."
"We don't know yet what he accessed.
May you like
Or what he deleted." Grace met my eyes.
"We may have a problem."
