Chapter 4: Diane
I stared at the message for three full seconds before I screenshot it.
Then I set the phone face-down on the counter and walked to the window.
The Chicago skyline sat out there the same as always, indifferent and bright.
I pressed my fingertips against the glass and breathed.
Officer Chen came back inside.
"Mrs.
Harlow.
We're going to need a formal statement.
Tonight if possible, or first thing tomorrow."
"Tonight," I said.
I turned around.
"Someone just texted me."
I showed him the phone.
He read the message.
His jaw shifted slightly.
"Do you know this number?"
"No."
"Has it contacted you before?"
"Never."
He photographed the screen with his own phone.
"Don't delete it.
Don't respond yet."
"I wasn't going to."
He looked at me with the particular expression of someone recalibrating what kind of person they're dealing with.
"You've done this before," he said.
"The recordkeeping.
The folder.
The camera."
"I watched my husband drain my business for a year and a half while telling me I was imagining things," I said.
"I read everything I could find about financial documentation and domestic @buse cases.
I talked to a lawyer six months ago."
"Six months."
"I wasn't ready then.
I needed more."
Chen was quiet for a moment.
"You have more."
"Yes."
He nodded and went back outside.
Through the open front door I could see Marcus sitting on the hallway bench, elbows on his knees, head down.
His mother was standing a few feet away with her arms crossed, speaking at him in a rapid, furious whisper.
He wasn't responding to her.
I watched him for a moment.
Two years ago I would have felt something complicated looking at him like that — some pull toward the version of him I had believed in.
Now I felt the way you feel watching a stranger on a train platform.
Distant.
Curious.
Finished.
My phone buzzed again.
Same number.
*I have proof.
Can we meet?*
I picked up the phone.
I typed: *Who are you?*
The reply came in under a minute.
*Someone he also lied to.
My name is Diane Marsh.
I was his business partner before you.
He did the same thing to my accounts.
I've been trying to find a way to come forward for eight months.*
I read it twice.
Then I walked to the front door.
"Officer Chen."
He turned.
"The woman who texted me.
Her name is Diane Marsh.
She says she was Marcus's business partner before our marriage.
She says he did the same thing to her accounts." I held up the phone.
"She says she has proof."
Marcus's head came up.
For the first time that night, he looked genuinely afraid — not the performed concern he'd shown the officers, not the calculating fear from when he'd seen the camera light.
This was something rawer.
The look of a man watching two separate walls close in from opposite sides.
His mother stopped whispering.
"Marcus," she said.
Her voice had changed.
"What is she talking about?"
He didn't answer her.
"Marcus." Louder now.
"What business partner?
You told me Rachel was the only—"
"Mother." His voice came out flat and exhausted.
"Stop."
She stared at him.
Officer Reyes stepped between them.
"Ma'am, I need you to—"
"Don't touch me." She pulled her arm back and looked at her son with an expression I had never seen on her face before.
Not anger.
Something closer to the first moment of a very long fall.
"You told me this condo was yours.
You told me your finances were sound.
You told me she was the problem."
Marcus said nothing.
"Answer me."
Still nothing.
She turned and looked at me.
And for one strange, suspended moment, the woman who had laughed while my face burned was looking at me the way someone looks when they realize they have been standing on the wrong side of a room.
I didn't say anything either.
Chen touched my elbow gently.
"Mrs.
Harlow.
Let's get that statement started."
I followed him inside.
Behind me, I heard Marcus's mother sit down heavily on the hallway bench.
May you like
I heard the sound of her trying to say something and not finding the words.
It was the first honest thing I'd heard from her all night.
