CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 2 — THE NUMBER I HAD NOT CALLED IN YEARS
I did not run downstairs.
I did not scream Jack’s name across the terminal.
I did not give Carol the satisfaction of seeing me collapse in front of strangers.
Instead, I turned away from the glass and walked slowly toward a quiet corner near the arrivals area.
My legs felt numb.
My face was wet.
But my hands were steady.
I opened my contacts and scrolled past names I used every day.
Jack.
Carol.
Ashley.
The hospital.
The housekeeper.
The school.
Then I found the one name I had buried years ago.
Gerald Price.
My attorney.
Not Jack’s attorney.
Mine.
The call connected on the second ring.
“Megan?”
His voice softened at once, and that nearly broke me.
Because Gerald had known me before the marriage.
Before I learned how to make myself smaller to fit beside a man everyone else admired.
“Gerald,” I said, looking back through the glass, “open the sealed file.”
Silence.
Then his voice changed.
“Everything?”
Downstairs, Jack gathered everyone together for another smiling photo.
The blonde woman leaned against his shoulder.
Carol stood beside her like a proud mother-in-law.
“Yes,” I said. “All of it.”
Gerald exhaled slowly.
“Megan, once I do this, there’s no putting it back.”
“I know.”
I closed my eyes.
For eight years, Gerald had kept a file because I asked him to.
Not because I wanted revenge.
Because I had learned early in my marriage that Jack’s charm was expensive, and somehow I was always the one paying.
The sealed file held copies of wire transfers from my inheritance into Jack’s private surgical practice.
Records proving I had quietly paid the down payment on our house.
Documents showing the medical equipment company Jack bragged about building had been financed through my family trust.
Emails where he begged me to keep my name off everything because “male investors take male founders more seriously.”
And the worst folder of all.
The folder I had not wanted to believe would ever matter.
Proof that Jack had used my signature on loan guarantees I had never approved.
For years, I had protected him.
At first, because I loved him.
Later, because I was ashamed.
I had been the smart woman who saw numbers clearly for everyone except herself.
Gerald’s keyboard clicked rapidly through the phone.
“The first documents are uploading now,” he said.
At that exact second, Jack pulled out his phone.
His smile vanished.
The blonde woman said something to him, but he did not answer.
He stared at the screen.
Then he looked up.
Not toward me at first.
Toward his mother.
Carol checked her phone next.
Her mouth opened.
Ashley’s phone lit up too.
The family photo collapsed before anyone could take it.
Gerald spoke again.
“The board has received the asset disclosures. The bank has received the fraud packet. Your trust officer has frozen all shared transfers.”
I watched Jack turn in a slow circle, searching.
Finally, his eyes lifted.
Through the glass.
May you like
To me.
For the first time all day, he looked like a man who had found his wife.
