Chapter 4: The Girl Who Smiled at My Wedding
There were exactly six girls in our friend group in high school.
I could name them all without thinking.
We had a group chat that still existed, though it had gone quiet over the years.
We had been bridesmaids at each other's weddings, or sent gifts when we couldn't make it, or at the very least sent messages that said *so happy for you* and meant it.
I had thought I meant it.
I had thought they meant it too.
I sat in my car outside the bank and opened my phone and went to the old photos.
Our prom.
Our graduation.
My wedding day.
There she was in every single one.
Smiling.
Standing close.
Holding my bouquet while I fixed my veil.
Renee.
Renee Hartwell, who had moved away two years after our wedding and sent a Christmas card every December with a photo of her dog.
Renee, who had called me on my birthday last year and talked for forty minutes about nothing in particular.
Renee, who had been Matthew's lab partner in junior year chemistry.
I called Dana.
"Renee Hartwell," I said.
"What do you know about her and Matthew?"
The pause was a fraction too long.
"Dana."
"There were rumors," she said.
"In high school.
I didn't think they meant anything.
Everyone knew you and Matthew were together."
"What kind of rumors?"
"That they had a thing before you two got serious.
That it didn't end cleanly.
I don't know the details, I swear to you.
It was high school gossip and then you got married and I thought it was ancient history."
Ancient history.
Funded through a savings account opened eleven months after my wedding.
"She's connected to one of the business accounts," I said.
"The ones Matthew used to move money into the account he opened in my name."
Dana went quiet for a long time.
"Are you somewhere safe?" she finally asked.
"I'm in a parking lot."
"Come to my house.
Don't go home.
Don't call Matthew.
Come here."
I drove to Dana's.
She met me at the door and pulled me inside without a word and sat me down at her kitchen table and put a cup of tea in front of me that I didn't drink.
"I need to understand what he was trying to do," I said.
"What does he get?
He opens an account in my name, he moves money into it — money that's partly mine already — and then what?
What's the endgame?"
"Control," Dana said.
"Or exit.
If he ever wanted to leave, he'd have a fund you didn't know about.
Or if something went wrong legally, the money's in your name, not his."
I thought about that.
"So either he was building a secret exit fund," I said slowly, "or he was setting me up to take the blame for something."
Dana's face told me she had already thought of both possibilities and hadn't wanted to say them out loud.
My phone rang.
Matthew.
I stared at his name on the screen.
Five years of that name meaning safety.
Five years of that name meaning home.
I let it ring.
He called again immediately.
I let it ring again.
Then a text: *Hey, where are you?
Thought you'd be home by now.
Dinner?*
Dinner.
As if it were a Tuesday.
As if I hadn't spent the last three hours learning that my marriage was a financial crime scene.
Dana was watching me.
"What are you going to do?" she said.
"I don't know yet," I said.
"But I need to find out who sent me those messages.
Someone knows more than we do.
Someone has been watching this long enough to know about the accounts, about Renee, about all of it."
I opened the unknown number thread and typed: *Who are you?*
Three dots appeared immediately.
Then stopped.
Then appeared again.
Then: *Someone who made the same mistake you did.
Meet me tomorrow.
May you like
I'll explain everything.
Don't tell Matthew.*
