Chapter 4: What Eighteen Months of Silence Cost
"How much is in the operating account?" Diane asked.
"As of last Friday — just over two hundred and forty thousand dollars."
She didn't flinch.
She picked up her pen.
"I'm calling Marcus tonight.
He handles financial fraud — white collar, forgery, civil and criminal both.
Don't touch that account.
Don't move anything, don't transfer anything, don't call Weston, don't respond to any messages from him or his mother.
Can you do that?"
"Yes."
"Where are you sleeping tonight?"
"My house."
"Is Weston on the mortgage?"
"No.
The house is solely mine."
"Good.
Change your locks tonight.
I mean tonight, Ava — not tomorrow." She wrote a name on a notepad and slid it across.
"This locksmith works evenings.
Tell him I sent you."
I looked at the name.
My hands had finally stopped shaking, which felt strange — like my body had made a decision my mind was still catching up to.
"Diane.
How did this happen?
The amendment — I would have remembered signing something like that."
She leaned back.
"Walk me through the last eighteen months.
Any signings, any notarizations, anything Weston put in front of you and asked you to sign quickly."
I thought.
There had been moments — a handful of them.
Weston sliding papers across the kitchen table while I was on a call, tapping the signature line, saying *just the standard renewal, babe, you've signed this before.* Me signing without reading because I was mid-sentence with a client and I trusted him.
I said that out loud.
Diane nodded slowly.
"That's how it's done."
"How long has he had access?"
"The amendment is dated eighteen months ago.
Whether he's used it before this week — Marcus will find that out."
My phone buzzed on the table.
Weston again.
This time a call, not a text.
I watched it ring.
"Don't," Diane said quietly.
I let it ring out.
Then it rang again.
Same number.
I declined it.
Ten seconds later, a text appeared.
*Ava I'm serious.
You're making this into something it isn't.
We need to talk before you do something you can't undo.
Think about the baby.*
I turned the phone so Diane could read it.
She read it.
She took a photo of the screen with her own phone.
"'Think about the baby,'" she said.
"He knows you went somewhere.
He's trying to pull you back before you find out how much." She set her phone down.
"He doesn't know you're here."
"No."
"Keep it that way."
I drove home at nine-fifteen.
The locksmith arrived at nine-forty.
By ten-thirty, there were new deadbolts on the front door, the back door, and the door between the garage and the kitchen.
The locksmith — a quiet man named Roy who smelled of coffee and machine oil — handed me four new keys without being asked for them and said, "Diane's clients always get four."
I stood in my kitchen after he left.
The house was the same house.
Same counters, same light above the sink that buzzed faintly when it first came on.
But it felt different in the way a room feels different after you've moved the furniture back to exactly where it was and can't explain why it no longer looks right.
I made tea.
I didn't drink it.
My phone showed fourteen missed calls by midnight.
Six from Weston.
Four from Corinne.
Two from a number I didn't recognize.
One from Weston's business partner, a man named Derek, whom I had met exactly three times.
One from Weston's sister, Paige, who had always been polite to me in the careful way of someone who has been told to be.
I did not call any of them back.
What I did do, at twelve-forty in the morning, was open my laptop and pull up every financial document I could access.
Agency statements.
Personal accounts.
The mortgage.
The investment account I'd opened four years ago and rarely touched.
The investment account.
I had not checked the investment account.
The balance was correct.
But the beneficiary designation — the field that named who would inherit the account if something happened to me — had been changed.
Eleven months ago.
The new beneficiary was not my sister.
It was not my mother.
It was Weston Hale.
I closed the laptop.
I sat in the dark kitchen for a long time.
Then I opened it again and forwarded everything to Diane.
Her reply came at 1:07 a.m.: *Marcus is already on it.
Don't sleep near your phone.
I'll call you at eight.*
I went upstairs.
I lay down.
I put one hand on my stomach.
"We're going to be fine," I said to no one, or to someone.
I didn't sleep.
May you like
But I stayed still, which felt like enough.
At 2:14 a.m., something moved on the front porch.
