Colleen described the affair in detail. Hotel receipts. Restaurant charges on a private card. Jewelry purchases she had never received. A gold earring beneath the passenger seat of Grant’s car. A perfume she didn’t wear clinging to his coat. When she confronted him, he told her she was imagining things. When she cried, he suggested therapy. When she found more evidence, he accused her of wanting conflict because pregnancy had made her unstable.
Dorothy closed her eyes.
She had heard versions of that language before. Not from her husband, who had been a decent man until the day a heart attack dropped him in the hardware store aisle at fifty-three. But from other women. Friends. Neighbors. Mothers at school pickup with shadows in their eyes and voices that apologized for their own suspicions.
The oldest trick in a cruel man’s book was simple: teach a woman to mistrust herself.
The letter went on.
I hired a private investigator. Paid cash. If you are holding this, his report is on the drive.