Joint checking, joint savings, the emergency fund, the college account for Lily. Every number sat exactly where I'd left it. I ran our credit reports next. Clean. No new cards, no new loans, no strange inquiries.
I drove to the county recorder that afternoon and pulled the title on our house. My name and his, unchanged since we bought it. No liens. Nothing.
I even called our longtime attorney to ask whether Nathan had filed anything through his office. He hadn't. If my husband was planning something, he was hiding it somewhere else.
I found the safe.
****
That Saturday he took Lily to soccer. Practice ran an hour, and then he usually stopped for donuts on the way back, which gave me ninety minutes if I was lucky.
The house went silent the way houses do when you're about to do something you can't undo.
His office door was locked. I used a bobby pin the way my brother taught me when we were kids, and it clicked open like it was tired of keeping secrets.
