Chapter 4: What She Said When the Cameras Were Rolling
"I think I know enough," I said.
I pulled out the chair across from her and sat down.
I placed the USB drive on the table between us.
I didn't open my jacket pocket yet.
I just let her look at it.
"That's nothing," she said.
"It's three weeks of footage."
Her eyes stayed on the drive.
"You had no right to put cameras in this house without telling me."
"You're right," I said.
"I probably should have told my wife I was installing security cameras.
I'll add that to the list of things we should have told each other."
She looked up.
"Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"That voice.
That calm, controlled — don't do that to me."
"Kendra.
I have footage of three different men entering this house.
I have one of them on camera leaving at six in the morning on a Tuesday.
I have bank records showing twenty-three thousand dollars withdrawn in cash over eleven months." I leaned forward slightly.
"So before you tell me what I had no right to do, I need you to understand what I'm actually looking at."
She was quiet for a moment.
Her jaw moved slightly, like she was choosing between two different answers.
"You don't understand the situation," she said finally.
"Then explain it to me."
"It's complicated."
"I have time."
She stood up.
Walked to the window.
Stood with her back to me and her arms crossed, looking out at the backyard.
Cody's soccer ball was sitting in the middle of the lawn where he'd left it two days ago.
"I was lonely," she said.
I didn't respond.
"Four months.
Every deployment.
Do you know what that's like?
Do you have any idea what it's like to be in this house alone with two kids while you're—"
"Don't," I said.
She turned around.
"I'm trying to explain—"
"You're trying to make me responsible for what you chose to do.
Those are two different things."
Her expression hardened.
"You were never here."
"I was serving."
"You were always serving.
Always gone.
Always somewhere else." Her voice climbed.
"I asked you to request a stateside position.
I asked you twice.
You said the timing wasn't right."
"So you spent twenty-three thousand dollars of our money on other men."
She flinched.
It was small, but I saw it.
"Where did the cash go, Kendra?"
"I needed—"
"Where did it go?"
"Expenses." She said it too quickly.
"Things for the house.
For the kids."
I reached into my jacket pocket and placed the bank statements on the table.
Printed.
Highlighted.
Dated.
"The house expenses are on the credit card," I said.
"I can account for every one of them.
The cash withdrawals are separate.
Twenty-three thousand dollars in cash doesn't go to school supplies and grocery runs."
She looked at the papers.
She didn't touch them.
"There's a man named Derek," I said.
Her face went still.
"He visited nine times in three months.
He stayed overnight four of those times.
He was there on Cody's birthday." I watched her.
"I need you to tell me who Derek is."
"He's a friend."
"A friend you spent money on."
"That's not—"
"I found the Venmo transfers, Kendra.
They go back eight months.
Fourteen transfers to an account registered to a Derek Allman." I put the printed Venmo records on top of the bank statements.
"Four hundred here.
Six hundred there.
One for twelve hundred dollars the week after I deployed."
She sat back down.
The composure was cracking now, not in tears but in the tight, careful way she was holding her mouth.
"I want you to leave," she said.
"This is my house."
"I want you to leave this room."
"I'm not leaving this room."
She stood up fast enough that the chair scraped back.
"You don't get to come home after four months and put documents on my table and interrogate me like I'm—"
"Like you're what?"
The question landed hard.
She stopped.
"Like you're what, Kendra?" I said again, quieter this time.
She didn't finish the sentence.
She pressed both hands flat on the table and looked down at the bank statements and the Venmo records and the USB drive, and for a moment the kitchen was completely silent except for the refrigerator hum and the distant sound of a car passing outside.
Then her phone lit up on the counter.
Face-up this time.
She'd forgotten to flip it.
The name on the screen was visible from where I was sitting.
Derek.
She moved toward it fast.
I didn't stop her.
She grabbed it and pressed the side button to darken the screen, but we both knew I had already seen it.
"Don't answer it," I said.
She held the phone against her chest.
"Kendra.
May you like
Don't answer it."
Her thumb moved to the screen anyway.
