Chapter 4: The Lawyer at the End of the Street
Her name was Patricia Holt.
Claire had used her two years earlier during her own divorce, and she described her as the kind of woman who asked three questions and already knew the answer before you finished the third one.
Patricia's office was on the second floor of a narrow building near the center of town.
Her desk was clean.
Her expression was steady.
She looked at me the way people look at a situation they have already assessed before you opened your mouth.
I laid out the documents I had printed that morning.
The bank statements.
The transaction history.
The screenshots of Vanessa's text.
The legal document I had triggered from the car, which was a formal separation filing I had quietly prepared over three months with a different attorney in a different city.
Patricia picked up the bank statements first.
"Forty-eight thousand," she said.
It was not a question.
"Over twenty-four months," I said.
"To an LLC registered in Vanessa's name."
"And you never authorized these transfers."
"Never."
"Is Nathan a co-signatory on this account?"
"He is."
She set the papers down and folded her hands.
"Then the question is whether he directed the transfers, approved them after the fact, or claims he had no knowledge of them."
"Which answer helps me most?"
"None of them help him," she said.
"That's the more useful point."
She looked at the separation filing.
"You filed this already?"
"Triggered it last night.
I had it prepared three months ago."
Something shifted slightly in her expression.
Not surprise.
More like recognition.
"How long have you been planning this?"
"I stopped planning and started preparing the night he told me I was too sensitive for bringing up his sister's behavior at Christmas."
Patricia picked up her pen.
"Tell me about the house."
"Purchased in my name.
Down payment from my savings.
Mortgage paid from my salary.
Nathan has been between jobs three times in twelve years.
Each time, I covered everything."
"Is his name on the title?"
"Joint title.
It was a gesture of good faith when we bought it."
She wrote something down.
"That gesture is going to cost him significantly less than it should have if we don't move carefully." She looked up.
"Has he tried to contact you since last night?"
"Eleven calls.
Four texts.
The last one said I was destroying the family."
"And Vanessa?"
I handed her the screenshot.
She read it once.
Then she read it again.
"*You don't want to take this further.
Trust me.*" She set it down.
"That is either a threat or a warning.
Either way, it tells me there is something she is afraid of you finding."
"The transfers," I said.
"Possibly.
Or something else." She tapped the page once with one finger.
"I want you to request the full two years of statements from every account — joint and individual.
I also want you to find out when Purely Vanessa LLC was registered and who the registered agent is."
"Why the registered agent?"
"Because sometimes the name on the paperwork is not the person running it."
I felt something cold settle at the base of my spine.
"You think Nathan is involved directly."
"I think," Patricia said carefully, "that a man who watches his wife get sl@pped at her own dinner table and tells her not to make it worse is a man who has already decided whose side he is on.
What I don't know yet is how far that decision goes." She closed the folder.
"Come back Thursday with everything I asked for."
I stood up to leave.
"Mrs.
Carter," she said.
I turned.
"Don't go back to the house alone.
If you need to retrieve belongings, take your sister or call me first."
I nodded and walked out into the hallway.
My phone buzzed before I reached the stairs.
Nathan: *"My mother has been trying to reach you.
She says she told you something last night.
Whatever she said, she's confused.
She's been confused for months.
Don't take anything she says seriously."*
I stood on the landing and read it three times.
Margaret's voice from the night before came back clearly.
*There are things about Nathan you don't know yet.*
May you like
She had not sounded confused.
She had sounded like a woman who had been waiting a long time to say something and had finally found the nerve.
