Chapter 8: The Last Thing He Said
The formal interview was on a Thursday morning, six weeks after the wedding that wasn't.
Grace met me outside the building — a plain office block near the town centre, nothing like I'd imagined.
She was carrying two coffees and handed me one without comment.
"How are you feeling?" she asked.
"Ready," I said.
"Good.
You're not under investigation.
You're a witness and a complainant.
Answer what they ask, take your time, and if anything is unclear, say so."
We went in.
I was in the interview room for just under two hours.
I told them everything in order — the drawer, the documents, the decision to marry him anyway so the family would be present, Eleanor's arrival, Daniel's message, the phone calls after.
I handed over the forwarded messages.
I gave them the timeline I had written out in a notebook over the preceding weeks, date by date, with the documents attached.
The investigator — a calm woman in her forties named Marsh — asked clear questions and wrote careful notes.
At the end, she said: "You chose to go through with the wedding rather than confront him privately beforehand.
Can you explain that decision?"
"Eleanor needed witnesses," I said.
"Not just me.
If I had confronted Maverick alone, it would have been my word against his.
His family needed to see the documents themselves, in the same room, at the same time, with Eleanor present.
Otherwise there was a version of events where I was the problem."
Marsh looked at me.
"You were protecting the integrity of the evidence."
"I was protecting Eleanor," I said.
"The evidence was part of that."
She nodded and wrote something down.
I came out into the corridor and Grace was waiting.
"Well?" she asked.
"I think it went all right."
She handed me the second coffee, which had gone cold.
I drank it anyway.
Maverick's formal interview was the following week.
I wasn't there.
I didn't need to be.
Grace called me afterward.
"He maintained that Eleanor had verbally agreed to the transfers," she said.
"His solicitor presented a statement.
Eleanor gave her own statement directly contradicting it.
The forensic signature analysis is already on record." A pause.
"He also said — and I want you to hear this from me rather than from someone else — that you had known about the transfers from the beginning and had been planning to use them against him to void the marriage contract and claim a financial settlement."
I was quiet for a moment.
"He said I was in on it."
"Yes."
"Does anyone believe that?"
"No," Grace said.
"The timeline doesn't support it.
Your actions don't support it.
And Eleanor's testimony doesn't support it." Another pause.
"But I wanted you to know he said it."
"Thank you," I said.
I sat with that for a while after we hung up.
The particular shape of it.
That even at the end, with everything on record and nothing left to maneuver, the last move he had made was to try to pull me down with him.
I thought about the man I had believed he was.
The version that had existed before February, before the drawer, before the document with Eleanor's forged signature.
The version that had been warm and funny and certain, who had known what wine I liked and remembered small things I mentioned and made me feel, for a while, completely seen.
That version had been real enough to convince me for years.
It had also been real enough to convince his entire family.
That was the part I kept coming back to.
Not the betrayal — I had had months to process the betrayal.
But the effort of it.
The sustained, daily effort of being that person while also being the other one.
I didn't understand it.
I wasn't sure I was meant to.
Three months after the interview, Grace called again.
"He's been charged," she said.
"Fraud by false representation.
The forged signature is the primary count.
There are three additional counts related to the pattern of transfers."
I was in a meeting.
I had stepped into the hallway to take the call.
"Eleanor knows?"
"She was notified this morning."
"How is she?"
"She told me to tell you — and I'm quoting directly — 'About time.'"
I laughed.
It came out before I could stop it, real and sudden, in the hallway outside a meeting room.
"Tell her I agree," I said.
I went back into the meeting.
That evening, Maverick sent one final message.
*I hope you're satisfied.*
I read it.
I didn't forward it to Grace.
There was nothing left to forward it for.
I deleted it.
Then I put my phone in my bag, poured a glass of wine, and sat down at the kitchen table in the quiet.
Outside, it was an ordinary evening.
Neighbours walking dogs.
A car pulling into a driveway.
The particular light of early autumn coming through the window, golden and unhurried.
May you like
I had not thought about the white ribbons on the wedding cars in weeks.
I noticed that now.
