I put the folder on her desk.
“He’s hiding assets. His mistress is pregnant. They’re going to try to turn that into some kind of family-values argument.”
Sandra took off her reading glasses, looked at me, and said, “Okay.”
That was it.
Not sympathy. Not alarm. Just okay, like she was handing me back my own center.
Then she leaned forward.
“Celeste, listen carefully. You spent years tracing hidden money. He is hiding money. This is not a plot twist. This is your home field.”
I stared at her.
The room went very quiet.
And then she was right there, right where the truth tends to hurt and help at the same time.
This was my field.
He had not chosen a new battlefield. He had wandered, stupidly, onto mine.
That afternoon, I dug out my old laptop from storage because it had software Nathan never knew I kept. I set up at the small desk in my apartment’s second bedroom with a heating pad against my lower back, a glass of ice water sweating rings onto a coaster, and transaction records spread around me like pieces of a map.
For three weeks, I lived inside the numbers.