We opened our bank statements, credit card records, and recent transactions.
At first, nothing seemed unusual.
Then I found three hotel charges on a credit card we shared.
The first was from two months earlier.
The second was from the previous month.
The third was from the hotel where I had filmed them.
I stared at the screen.
“Daniel, look at this.”
He leaned over my shoulder.
“That’s your card?”
“Our card.”
He looked sick.
“So he was paying for rooms with your money.”
“Our money,” I corrected automatically.
Then I stopped.
It was a habit, that phrase. Our money. Our house. Our future. Our life.
For thirty-one years, I had treated our marriage as a partnership.
Mark had apparently treated it as a place to hide.
Daniel sat back and stared at the table.
“I don’t understand how people do this,” he said. “How do you eat dinner with someone, ask them about their day, tell them you love them, and then go do something like that?”
