“Everybody needs to calm down.”
Colleen spoke from behind Tanya.
“That sentence usually works better before the documents arrive.”
Garrett’s jaw tightened.
“This is none of your business, Colleen.”
“It became my business when my cousin needed help understanding why almost twenty-nine thousand dollars disappeared from a joint account.”
A murmur moved through the yard.
Garrett turned toward me.
“Twenty-nine thousand? You’re making it sound like I stole money.”
I had wondered what his first defense would be.
Denial?
Apology?
Blame?
Instead, he chose accounting.
“They were withdrawals,” he said.
“I put money into that account too.”
Colleen opened her folder.
“And that is why we documented every one of them instead of standing here arguing from memory.”
She handed me a stack of copies.
The papers felt strangely light considering how much of my marriage they contained.
I placed the first bank statement on the white folding table.
Then another.
Then another.
Red circles marked the withdrawals.
Garrett looked down and immediately recognized them.
His shoulders shifted.
Not much.
Enough.
Tanya placed her own papers beside mine.
Appointment receipts.
Purchase receipts.
Copies of messages Garrett had sent her during the months he was telling me he was working late or helping with delayed deliveries.
I didn’t need to read them aloud.
Tanya did.
“March third,” she said.
“You told me, ‘Once everything is finished with her, we won’t have to hide anymore.’”
Garrett’s mother whispered his name.
Tanya pulled out another page.
“April twenty-first.
‘My marriage has been dead for years.
I’m only waiting for paperwork.’”
I watched Garrett’s face.
He didn’t look at me.
He looked at the witnesses.
That hurt differently.
Even then, his first instinct was not to understand what he had done to us.
It was to calculate what everyone else now knew.
He reached for the papers.
Tanya pulled them back.
“Don’t.”
Her voice cracked on the single word.
He stopped.
“You lied to me too,” she said.
“You let me build plans around a divorce that never existed.”
Garrett finally looked at me.
“I can explain.”
