Martin Doyle met me in Edna’s kitchen the next Saturday, a thin man with silver glasses and a battered briefcase. I laid out the copies I had hidden in a hollow book, and he read every page in silence for almost two hours. At the end, he tapped one invoice and said, “Natalie, this vendor does not exist. It has a mailing address, and the address belongs to a storage unit rented by someone named V. Whitlock.” My heart began to hammer.

“Vanessa,” I whispered. He nodded. “She used your husband’s last name to avoid suspicion, and the transfers fit a pattern of forty-one payments over fourteen months.” Then he lifted a second sheet, a bank record dated three weeks before my arrest, showing a deposit to a joint account in Gregory’s and Vanessa’s names. Edna leaned forward in her chair and said quietly, “Natalie, I think they have been more than business partners.”