Chapter 9: Accounting
By the end of the first month the divorce petition was moving, the protective order was in force, and the financial recovery process had formal defendants and a documented pattern.
Brandon’s early attempts to characterize the missing funds as joint decisions or bookkeeping errors failed against the transfer records and the absence of my signature or knowledge on the key movements. His brothers’ names appeared in secondary channels; Claire noted the connections and left the expansion of claims for the appropriate stage. No one from his family contacted me directly once the order was active.
I returned to work on a reduced schedule and kept every communication with Brandon’s side routed through Claire. The joint account remained frozen pending the recovery actions. The nearly $170,000 was no longer a private marital disappointment. It was a documented depletion under investigation.
The man who had struck my mother and then offered me a choice between her and the marriage had also been emptying the account we called our future.
Both facts were now in the file.
I had no remaining interest in reconciling either of them.
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The next decisions belonged to the court calendar and the recovery process.
Mine had already been made on the count of five.
