“I think people do unpredictable things when they realize secrecy is over.”
I nodded.
Then asked the question I had been avoiding.
“What about the woman?”
Audrey folded her hands.
“First, identify her.”
“How?”
“Do you have access to his calendar?”
Shared family account.
I did.
He had stopped using it for most things while I was abroad.
But old entries remained.
I searched.
One name appeared repeatedly in the past year.
Mara Ellison.
Pediatric appointment.
School pickup.
Dinner.
O’Hare.
No explanation.
The child’s name appeared beside one calendar event.
Theo.
My chest tightened.
“The boy is Theo.”
Audrey looked up.
“How do you know?”
I turned the screen toward her.
A calendar entry from two months earlier read:
Theo preschool meeting – 4:30.
Another:
Mara OB – Northwestern.
Another:
Airport pickup M + T.
Mara.
Theo.
Pregnant.
I searched social media.
Mara Ellison was not hard to find.
Thirty-two.
Originally from Milwaukee.
Worked in event production.
Her profile was mostly private.
But one older public photograph showed Theo at a birthday party.
He was two.
I enlarged it.
There was no mistaking the resemblance.
I looked at Audrey.
“That’s his son.”
She did not say yes.
Lawyers dislike conclusions without documents.
“Possibly.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Fine.”
“Possibly.”
Audrey asked me not to contact her.
I agreed.
I returned to my hotel.
For several hours, I sat at the desk and reconstructed my marriage.
Not emotionally.
Financially.
Transfers from Kuala Lumpur.
Mortgage statements.
Automatic payments.
Investment accounts.
Our retirement savings.
Three years of numbers.
One pattern became obvious.
Every month, within forty-eight hours of my salary arriving, a portion moved somewhere else.
Sometimes $4,000.
Sometimes $7,500.
Sometimes more.
Transfers to accounts ending 4412 and 0987.
I searched old tax forms.
Nothing.
Then I found one email from Corbin two years earlier.
Attached was a screenshot of an investment balance.
He had written:
