PART 6
I remembered that night.
I had come home around eight.
Maya was asleep.
Danielle looked exhausted.
Mom said they had spent the afternoon at the pool.
I believed her.
The truth was that my wife and daughter had spent two hours locked on a balcony.
Inside my home.
While I was working twelve minutes away.
I walked into the bathroom.
I closed the door.
Then I threw up.
Afterward, I sat on the floor.
I wanted to blame Loretta for everything.
That would have been easier.
But Loretta did not prevent me from asking questions.
She did not force me to dismiss Danielle.
She did not make me believe that earning money outside the home meant I understood what happened inside it.
I had done that myself.
The next morning, I called work.
I took emergency leave.
Then I changed every lock.
Every access code.
Every password.
I removed Loretta from my credit cards.
I froze my credit.
Then I helped Danielle freeze hers.
We contacted the bank.
The fifteen thousand dollars in cashier’s checks were only part of it.
Over eleven months, almost forty-three thousand dollars had left our accounts in payments connected to Loretta.
Some were transfers.
Some were checks.
Some were cash withdrawals.
Some had been hidden inside ordinary expenses.
I stared at the total.
“Forty-three thousand?”
Danielle nodded.
“I tried to keep track.”
She opened her laptop.
There was a spreadsheet.
Dates.
Amounts.
Reasons.
Threats.
Everything.
I looked at her.
“You documented it?”
“I thought someday I might need to prove I wasn’t crazy.”
That sentence made me look away.
The financial investigator assigned to the case was Detective Aaron Bell.
He came to our apartment three days later.
He was patient.
Quiet.
He listened more than he spoke.
Danielle showed him the spreadsheet.
Then the notebook from Loretta’s drawer.
Then text messages.
Most were subtle.
You embarrassed me today.
Marcus works too hard for you to be this ungrateful.
Maya needs discipline.
Don’t make me tell Marcus what you’re really like.
But some were direct.
Transfer the money.
Leave the card on my dresser.
No dinner until the kitchen is finished.
One message stopped Detective Bell.
It was from two months earlier.
Loretta wrote:
If Marcus ever chooses between us, remember whose name is on the life insurance.
I looked at Danielle.
“What does that mean?”
She shook her head.
“I never knew.”
Detective Bell asked me.
“Who is your life insurance beneficiary?”
“Danielle.”
“Only Danielle?”
“Yes.”
He looked toward the documents taken from Loretta’s drawer.
Then he said something that made the room feel colder.
“We should verify that.”
