Chapter 7: Money
The forensic look at our finances began with passwords I could now type myself.
For years Brian had “helped” by reading balances aloud—always enough, always tight because of medical costs, always a reason the garage roof could not be opened for storage I did not need to see. The statements under my own login told a different story: regular transfers, cash withdrawals timed with his “trips,” a credit card I had never touched because I could not have read the bill without him.
Nora’s paralegal built a timeline beside the medical timeline—diagnoses, cane, clinic visits, the experimental surgery Brian had called false hope. Parallel to that, the second address’s rent payments. Parallel to that, purchases at a toy store and a pharmacy near Samantha’s complex. The marriage’s economy had been running two households on a narrative of one woman’s dependence.
I sat in Nora’s conference room and felt heat rise behind my new eyes. “He told me we couldn’t afford the earlier specialist in Chicago.”
“We’ll request those records,” Nora said. “If he declined treatment pathways while funding another residence, that becomes part of the story the court hears about good faith.”
May you like
Good faith. The phrase almost made me laugh again. Brian’s good faith had been a hand on my elbow and a locked garage door.
At home I cooked a meal by recipe card, reading each line twice for the joy of reading it at all. Dana came over and ate with me in silence that was not pity. Afterward we listed furniture I would keep and items that could go into disclosure as marital property, including the sedan. I did not want the car. I wanted the fact of it on a page he could not narrate away.
