Chapter 6: The Notebook
I had started the notebook on a Tuesday in October.
Derek had been on the phone in the kitchen, talking to someone whose name I didn't catch, and I had walked in to refill my water glass.
He'd turned his back to me and lowered his voice.
When he hung up, he said it was a client call.
When I asked which client, he said I wouldn't know them.
That night, I bought a small spiral notebook from the pharmacy two blocks from my office.
I paid cash.
I kept it in the zippered pocket of my gym bag, which lived in the trunk of my car, which Derek never touched because he found it too small and too old and had told me more than once that I should let him trade it in for something better — something in his name, with his insurance, that he could "manage properly."
I had kept the car.
For eight months, I had written down dates, amounts, and exact words.
The date in November when Derek transferred $4,200 from our joint account into a personal account he had opened without telling me, explaining it later as "investment planning."
The night in January when he told me, during an argument about the baby's nursery, that if I ever tried to leave him I would have nothing — no money, no house, no car, and no lawyer who could touch him because he knew everyone in Columbus worth knowing.
The morning in February when I found a receipt in his jacket pocket for a hotel two miles from our house.
One night.
One room.
His credit card.
The text thread in March.
Karen's name at the top.
Forty-seven messages.
I had photographed every screen.
I had also kept the bank statements — printed copies, folded into an envelope tucked inside the back cover of the notebook.
Every month for eight months.
Every transfer, every withdrawal, every charge that didn't match what he'd told me.
When Diane came back the next morning, I handed her the notebook.
She sat in the chair beside the bed and read without speaking for eleven minutes.
I know because Rachel timed it.
When Diane looked up, her expression was the same careful calm it always was.
But something behind her eyes had shifted.
"This is thorough," she said.
"I had time to think," I said.
"Toward the end of the pregnancy, I wasn't sleeping much anyway."
She turned back to the hotel receipt page.
"This charge.
February fourteenth."
"Valentine's Day," I said.
She looked at me.
"He told me he was in Cincinnati for a work conference," I said.
"I have the email he sent me that morning.
I forwarded it to you last night."
Diane set the notebook on her knee and folded her hands over it.
"His attorney filed this morning," she said.
"Emergency motion, as he promised.
He's claiming you left the state of Ohio with a minor child without his consent and without notifying him of your location."
Rachel leaned forward.
"Emily is three days old."
"I know," Diane said.
"The motion is aggressive and it's meant to frighten you.
It is not going to succeed." She tapped the notebook.
"Not with this." She paused.
"But I want you to understand what the next few weeks are going to look like.
He is going to escalate before he retreats.
That's what the filing is — escalation.
He wants you scared enough to come back to Columbus on his terms."
"I'm not going back," I said.
"I know you're not," Diane said.
"But he doesn't believe that yet." She stood and tucked the notebook carefully into her folder.
"I'm going to make copies of everything today.
I'll return the originals tomorrow." She looked at me directly.
"He's going to make one more move before this is over.
Something bigger than the filing.
I don't know what it is yet.
But men like Derek always have one more thing they've been saving."
She said it matter-of-factly, the way someone describes weather.
"When he uses it," she said, "call me immediately.
Don't respond to him.
Don't respond to his attorney.
Call me."
She left.
Emily was awake in the bassinet, looking up at the ceiling with the unfocused gaze of someone encountering the world for the first time.
Rachel watched the door close.
"What do you think the one more thing is?" she said.
I had been asking myself the same question since the night before.
There was something Derek had said to me once, eight months ago, in the middle of an argument I had tried to end by walking out of the kitchen.
He had said it quietly, almost to himself, the way people say things they've been thinking for a long time.
*You think you can just walk away from this.
You have no idea what I can do.*
At the time, I had told myself it was anger talking.
Now, lying in a hospital bed in Pennsylvania with my daughter three days old and my husband's attorney already filing motions, I wasn't so sure.
May you like
"I don't know," I told Rachel.
But I was starting to think I needed to find out before he used it.
