Chapter 13 - THE AFFIDAVIT
I called Tessa before Rachel could stop me.
She answered on the first ring.
"Audrey?"
"Did you sign an affidavit for Gavin?"
Silence.
My stomach dropped.
"Tessa."
"Not knowingly."
I closed my eyes.
"What does that mean?"
"He asked me to sign a statement last week."
"About me?"
"He said it was for his attorney to prove we were separated before he met me."
"What did it say?"
"I didn't read all of it."
I almost screamed.
Then I remembered June fourteenth.
A clipboard.
A signature.
A commercial break.
I forced my voice down.
"Do you have a copy?"
"No."
"Rachel has one."
Tessa started crying.
"I swear I never heard you say you would leave the state."
"Will you tell that to the court?"
"Yes."
"Under oath?"
"Yes."
"Then call your attorney and Detective Reese."
"I will."
I ended the call.
Rachel was still on the line from another phone.
"That was reckless," she said.
"I know."
"Do not do it again."
"I know."
"But it was useful."
"I know."
She sighed.
"You are becoming difficult to manage."
"Good."
That made her laugh once.
Then she explained the affidavit.
Tessa's signature was notarized.
The body claimed she had personally heard me say I intended to move out of state after the birth and prevent Gavin from seeing the baby.
It also said I had threatened to destroy Gavin financially.
None of it had happened.
"Could he have changed the document after she signed?"
"Possibly."
"Is that a crime?"
"Potentially. Let law enforcement handle it."
Every time Rachel said potentially, I heard Detective Reese saying possibly.
Legal language was full of doors no one opened until evidence turned the handle.
Tessa's attorney acted quickly.
By the next afternoon, he sent a declaration stating Tessa disputed the content attributed to her.
She said Gavin had shown her only a different first page before she signed.
She also provided text messages.
GAVIN: NEED YOU TO VERIFY WE WERE TOGETHER BEFORE THE DIVORCE.
TESSA: WHY?
GAVIN: AUDREY IS TRYING TO CLAIM I CHEATED.
TESSA: DIDN'T YOU SAY YOU WERE ALREADY SEPARATED?
GAVIN: EXACTLY. JUST SIGN SO MY LAWYER HAS IT.
The messages made me nauseated.
Gavin had turned Tessa into a witness against me before she even knew there was a case.
Then Detective Reese called with news from Unit 214.
Police had executed a search warrant.
"We recovered a large quantity of financial records."
"Mine?"
"Some."
"What else?"
"Copies of IDs, account applications, credit documents."
"Whose IDs?"
"I can't discuss other possible victims."
Other victims.
The phrase struck hard.
"There are others?"
"I can't confirm that yet."
But he had already confirmed enough.
"Did you find the crib?"
A pause.
"Yes."
My eyes filled unexpectedly.
"Is it okay?"
Reese sounded surprised.
"It appears intact."
"What about the changing table?"
"Also there."
"Diapers?"
"Several boxes."
I laughed through tears.
The detective waited.
"Sorry."
"No need."
"Can I get them back?"
"Not immediately. They were documented as part of the search."
My heart sank.
"But eventually?"
"Likely."
Likely.
Another word to hate.
"Anything else from the nursery?"
"A monitor."
"We never bought a monitor."
Silence.
"What kind?"
"A camera system."
I frowned.
Then I remembered the small white device Gavin had mounted on the nursery shelf two months ago.
He told me it was an air quality sensor.
I had never questioned it.
"Was it a camera?"
"It appears so."
My skin crawled.
"Was it recording?"
"We are examining it."
I thought about changing clothes in the nursery.
Folding baby clothes.
Talking to my stomach.
Crying once after Gavin told me I was spending too much on prenatal vitamins.
"Did he watch me?"
"We don't know."
"The garage camera was connected to his phone."
"I remember."
"What about the nursery camera?"
"We will find out."
I hung up and went straight to the bathroom.
I vomited.
Marlene held my hair back.
When I finished, she helped me sit on the floor.
"What happened?"
"There was a camera in the nursery."
She stared at me.
"The air sensor?"
"Apparently not."
Her face changed from shock to fury.
"He watched you?"
"We don't know."
"He better pray he didn't."
I almost smiled.
"That's not very maternal."
"Neither is stealing twelve thousand dollars from your mother."
That afternoon, I changed every password again.
Email.
Phone carrier.
Cloud storage.
College account.
Medical portal.
Then I found something Gavin had missed.
A shared photo album.
He had created it for the nursery renovation.
Most of the pictures were paint samples and furniture ideas.
One recent image did not belong.
It had been uploaded automatically from his phone.
A photograph of a whiteboard.
I zoomed in.
At the top, written in black marker, were three words.
EXIT PLAN - NOV.
Below that were columns.
MONEY.
HOUSING.
LEGAL.
BABY.
Under MONEY:
TRUST.
TESSA.
MOM.
AUDREY.
Under HOUSING:
STORAGE.
SHORT-TERM RENTAL.
Under LEGAL:
FILE FIRST.
DOCUMENT INSTABILITY.
Under BABY:
ACCESS.
CERTIFICATE.
TRUSTEE ISSUE.
My hands went numb.
This was not a man reacting badly to being caught.
This was a plan.
I sent the image to Rachel and Detective Reese.
Rachel called immediately.
"Where did you get this?"
"Shared album."
"Preserve the metadata."
"I will."
"Do not delete anything."
"I won't."
She was quiet.
"Audrey, this materially changes how I view his court filings."
"Because he planned to call me unstable before any of this happened."
"Yes."
My throat tightened.
The word instability had been written on a whiteboard before he slapped my card out of my hand.
Before I discovered the missing money.
Before I called the bank.
Gavin had prepared a story in advance.
He expected me to find out.
The only thing he had not expected was how much evidence he would leave behind.
That night, I woke at 1:17 a.m. with a tightening across my abdomen.
I lay still.
It eased.
Ten minutes later, another came.
Then another.
Marlene found me standing in the hallway with one hand on the wall.
"Audrey?"
"I think I'm having contractions."
Her face went white.
"How far apart?"
"I don't know."
Then warmth ran down my legs.
We both looked at the floor.
Marlene grabbed her keys.
Marlene moved with astonishing speed.
She grabbed my hospital bag, charger, wallet, folders, and the ugly pink sweater she insisted the baby might need even though I had told her seventeen times the hospital provided blankets.
I stood by the front door breathing through another contraction.
"How far apart?" she asked.
"Six minutes. Maybe seven."
"Maybe?"
"I wasn't timing the first two."
"Why not?"
"Because I was busy discovering my husband built a legal campaign against me."
"Fair."
She opened the passenger door.
Then stopped.
"Do we call Gavin?"
The question hung there.
A week earlier, I would have called automatically.
He was my husband.
The father.
The person society told me belonged beside me in labor.
Now every title had become separate from behavior.
"Not yet."
Marlene nodded.
No argument.
No guilt.
On the drive, she obeyed exactly three traffic laws and treated the others as suggestions.
I gripped the handle above the door.
"I said hospital, not police chase."
"I'm going the speed limit."
"You passed a city bus."
"It was slow."
Another contraction hit.
For forty seconds, nothing existed except pressure.
When it eased, I looked at the dark road ahead.
"What if she comes tonight?"
Marlene glanced at me.
"Then she comes tonight."
"I'm not ready."
"No one is."
"The crib is evidence."
"We'll buy another."
"The insurance is a mess."
"We'll solve it."
"My husband filed for divorce."
"We know."
"He planned custody before she was born."
Marlene's voice became firm.
"And none of that gets to decide whether she is loved when she arrives."
I looked out the window.
For the first time all night, my fear became smaller than the road in front of us.
Halfway to the hospital, I texted Carmen that I might not be at work the following week.
She replied almost immediately.
STOP THINKING ABOUT WORK.
Then another message.
YOUR QUEUE IS COVERED.
Then a third.
HAVE THE BABY. THAT IS THE ASSIGNMENT.
I showed Marlene.
She laughed.
"I like her."
"She scares administrators."
"I like her more."
The contraction timer showed five minutes and forty seconds.
I watched the numbers count upward.
For weeks, my life had been measured in money and deadlines.
Transfers.
Court dates.
Loan balances.
Insurance termination dates.
Now the only number that mattered was how long until the next contraction.
It was almost a relief.
My body had reduced the world to something honest.
Pain arrived.
Pain passed.
No one could forge it.
No one could move it to another account.
May you like
No one could tell me I had imagined it.
"Hospital. Now."
