Chapter 5: What Carol Knew
The coffee shop was small and warm and smelled like cinnamon.
Carol was already there when I arrived — a woman in her mid-thirties with tired eyes and her hands wrapped around a mug she hadn't touched.
She stood when she saw me.
"Thank you for coming."
"Thank you for reaching out," I said.
I sat down across from her.
We looked at each other for a moment.
Two strangers connected by the same man's dishonesty.
"I'll start from the beginning," she said.
"Stop me if you need to."
"Go ahead."
"Diane met Wesley about nine months ago.
At a work event — he was there with a colleague.
She didn't know he was married at first.
He didn't wear his ring."
I looked at my own hands on the table.
"By the time she found out, she was already in love with him.
He told her the marriage was over in everything but paperwork.
That you two had been living like roommates for years.
That he was just waiting for the right time to leave."
"We were not living like roommates," I said.
"I know," Carol said.
"I could tell from the way he talked about you that it wasn't true.
But Diane believed what she wanted to believe."
"And the money?"
Carol wrapped both hands tighter around her mug.
"About four months ago, Diane mentioned that Wesley had asked her to hold something for him.
A bank statement, she thought, or an account document.
She didn't look closely.
But she said the number on it was significant.
Over sixty thousand."
The number landed like a stone.
"He told her it was savings he'd been setting aside," Carol continued.
"For when he finally left.
For their future together."
"That's our money," I said.
"That's money from our joint account.
We've been saving for years — for the children's education, for the house."
Carol nodded slowly.
"I thought it might be something like that."
"Does Diane still have the document?"
"I don't know.
I think she might.
She kept it somewhere at her apartment.
She mentioned it once and then never brought it up again."
I sat back in my chair.
"Carol," I said.
"Why are you doing this?
Diane is your sister."
She was quiet for a moment.
"Because I've watched my sister cancel trips, turn down a promotion, stop seeing her friends — all for a man who has been lying to her just as much as he's been lying to you." She looked up.
"He told her you were cold.
That you didn't love him anymore.
That the pregnancy was an accident you'd both been indifferent about."
Something moved through me that I didn't have a name for.
"I planned that pregnancy," I said.
"We both did.
We tried for eight months."
Carol closed her eyes briefly.
"I know.
I could tell.
When you texted me back that first night, within ten minutes, I could tell."
She reached into her bag and slid a folded piece of paper across the table.
"I found this in Diane's apartment two weeks ago when I was helping her move a bookshelf.
It fell out from behind it.
I don't think she knows I have it."
I unfolded it.
It was a handwritten note.
Wesley's handwriting — I knew it immediately, the way the letters leaned slightly left, the way he always wrote his sevens with a crossbar.
*D — account set up.
Routing confirmed.
Don't mention to anyone.
This is ours.
— W*
I folded it back along the same creases and placed it flat on the table between us.
"I need to make a phone call," I said.
"Of course."
I stepped outside.
The morning air was sharp.
I found the number in my wallet — the one I had written down three nights ago and carried without calling.
May you like
I called it.
The attorney answered on the second ring.
