“I used to,” I answered, staring at the blank page.
“No,” she said, sharper now. “You still do. The only difference is that now it hurts.”
That landed because it was true.
So I started writing.
Dates, charges, claimed locations, verified details, and notes that grew more specific with every memory I allowed myself to revisit.
He had started showering later on Tuesdays and Thursdays, sometimes coming home with the faint citrus scent of hotel soap instead of the woodsy one he kept in our bathroom. One evening in early fall, I had found a trace of glitter on his cuff and dismissed it as a work event. Months earlier, he had purchased a sapphire pendant and told me it had been returned because of a flaw.
I wrote everything down.
By midnight, the legal pad had several pages filled with precise handwriting.
By morning, I had emailed an old colleague named Patrick Doyle, a man who had once told me I had an instinct for financial dishonesty that bordered on unsettling.
He replied before sunrise with a single sentence.
You need a private investigator and a strong attorney, and I am already making calls.