Chapter 4: Forensics
The forensic team cared about timestamps and authorization chains, not chicken or stained linen.
I met them in Marcus’s conference room, left hand free for signatures, right hand bound in a smaller, uglier dressing. I answered with exhibits: transfers flagged across eighteen months, vendor numbers that had looked wrong in a shared inbox, a “loan” to a golf acquaintance that had never returned. One accountant nodded when a suspected story grew legs.
Daniel’s counsel tried to wall the marital incident off from corporate review. Marcus cited guests, work email, executives present, and a CEO committing violence on camera in front of people who reported to him. The wall cracked. Cracks kept the suspension intact while the numbers people worked.
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At night I followed the clinic’s boring prescriptions—elevation, lotion when allowed, exercises that kept skin from tightening into a permanent fist. Pain shifted from bright to deep. Deep was harder to dramatize and easier to live beside. I cooked left-handed. I typed left-handed. I dictated when the palm throbbed too hard for keys. Independence had a learning curve measured in dropped forks.
Evelyn’s sentences traveled through mutual acquaintances: unstable, ungrateful, destroying him over an accident. Marcus said the only response that mattered was process and my absence from gossip. I complied. A service collected clothes from the marital house with a list and a police incident number I had filed once the medical file was complete enough to sit beside it. A spatula from the old set arrived on top of a box—someone’s joke. I trashed it and kept the report number on the fridge with a magnet.
