Chapter 6: What Diane Didn't Know
Marcus moved fast once I sent him the screenshots.
By Thursday he had a financial forensic contact reviewing the transfer trail.
By Friday morning he called me from his office.
"The thirty-five hundred marked as medical," he said.
"It went to a joint account held by your wife and her sister."
I pulled my car over to the side of the road.
"Renee," I said.
"Renee Patricia Calloway.
They opened it fourteen months ago.
There have been nine transfers from your joint savings into that account over the past year.
Total amount: just over nineteen thousand dollars."
Nineteen thousand.
"She's been moving it for a year," I said.
"At minimum.
This is what we can document.
There may be more we haven't found yet."
I sat with that number.
One year.
While I was working, paying the mortgage, coaching Kayla through her driving test, sitting in the front row at the school play.
Nineteen thousand dollars.
"What does this mean legally?" I asked.
"In a divorce proceeding, marital assets transferred without the other spouse's knowledge or consent become part of the discovery.
She will be required to account for every dollar.
If she can't — and given that these went to a private account her sister controls, she likely can't produce legitimate receipts — a judge will treat it as dissipation of marital assets." He paused.
"That affects the settlement significantly.
In your favor."
"She thought she was getting ahead of it," I said.
"She told her sister that.
She said she needed to get ahead of it."
"She miscalculated the timeline," Marcus said.
"She thought she had more time before you noticed."
"She might have," I said.
"If Kayla hadn't found that phone."
Marcus was quiet for a moment.
Then: "Is the daughter all right?"
"She's doing better than she should be."
"Keep her out of this as much as you can.
She's already carrying too much."
I drove the rest of the way to work with the radio off.
When I sat down at my desk, I had three emails from colleagues and a calendar reminder for a meeting I didn't have the capacity to attend.
I stared at my screen for a while without reading anything.
Then I called my brother again.
"It's worse than I thought," I told him.
"How much worse?"
"Nineteen thousand.
Over a year.
She and Renee have a joint account I never knew about."
He didn't say anything for a long moment.
"Ray.
I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry yet.
I just need you to know, in case anything happens and I need someone who already has the timeline."
"I've got it," he said.
"Whatever you need."
That evening I came home to a normal kitchen.
Diane had made dinner.
The table was set.
She asked about my day and listened when I answered.
She laughed at something I said about a coworker.
She touched my arm when she walked past me to the sink.
Kayla sat across from me and kept her eyes on her plate for most of the meal.
Once, she glanced up and looked at me for just a second.
I gave her the smallest nod I could manage.
She looked back down at her food.
After dinner Diane suggested we watch something together, and I said yes, and I sat beside her on the couch for two hours while something played on the screen that I couldn't have described afterward if you had asked me.
When she went to bed, she kissed me on the cheek.
"This weekend," she said.
"We'll really talk."
"This weekend," I agreed.
She went upstairs.
I sat on the couch for a while in the dark.
Then I took out my phone and sent Marcus one message: *She doesn't know I know.
How long do we need to hold this position?*
He replied within ten minutes.
*One more week.
I want everything documented before anything moves.
Then we talk about next steps.*
One more week.
I turned the television off.
In the quiet, the house sounded exactly like it always had.
Same hum of the refrigerator.
Same creak of the second stair.
Same branch against the window on the east side of the house.
May you like
Everything the same.
Nothing the same.
