Chapter 4 - A MARRIAGE BUILT ON RECEIPTS
Martin arranged for me to stay at a small hotel registered under the investigator's business account.
I spent the evening reviewing nine years of marriage through the lens of a single question.
When had Ethan stopped seeing me as a person and started seeing me as a route to Dad's assets?
There had been the refinancing proposal I refused to sign.
There had been the sudden interest in Dad's retirement accounts.
There had been Ethan's insistence that I give him access to all my passwords as a gesture of trust.
I opened an old email account and found a message from our first year together.
It was from Marjorie.
"She is sentimental about the garage," she had written to Ethan.
"Be patient. Make her believe that selling it is her idea."
The date was three weeks after our wedding.
I sat on the bed until the screen went dark.
Then I called Martin.
"Did Dad know how long this had been happening?"
"He learned portions of it," Martin said.
"He did not know whether Ethan was pursuing you for money from the start."
"I need the truth."
"Then keep evidence separate from suspicion," he replied.
He told me a preservation notice had gone out to the bank, pharmacy, storage operator, and relevant phone providers.
The investigator was preparing a careful timeline.
By morning, Ethan had called my employer claiming I was emotionally unstable and had vanished after the funeral.
My supervisor, Helena Price, called to ask if I was safe.
"He said you're having an episode," she told me.
I closed my eyes.
"I'm safe. Please don't share my location."
"I won't," she said.
"And Lydia, he's asked for copies of the workplace benefits forms you completed last year."
I had named Ethan as my emergency contact.
I wondered what else that signature had allowed him to see.
At noon, Nora delivered another discovery.
Northstar Property Holdings had filed an application for a substantial commercial loan, using the garage property as proposed collateral.
It included an alleged consent form bearing my signature.
I had never seen the form.
The photograph attached to the application showed my father standing outside his shop.
Someone had cropped me out of the original image.
And under the line reserved for the applicant's spouse, Ethan had written a sentence that turned my stomach.
May you like
"She has agreed not to interfere."
