Chapter 6: What Petra Brought With Her
Petra arrived forty minutes later in a dark green coat, carrying two coffees from the place on Renwick Street that she knew was the only coffee she would actually drink.
She got into the passenger seat without being invited and handed over the cup.
"Talk," Petra said.
So she talked.
All of it.
The bank call.
The mother's door.
The registration document.
The prenup.
Clifford's voice on the phone.
The letter.
She talked for twenty minutes without stopping, and Petra listened without interrupting, which was not something Petra did often.
When she finished, Petra was quiet for a moment.
"Can I show you something?" she said.
"What?"
Petra opened her bag and took out her phone.
She turned it to face her.
It was a photograph.
A screenshot of a message thread.
The name at the top of the thread was hers.
The messages were not ones she had sent.
"What is this?" she said.
"Someone sent this to me eight months ago.
Anonymously.
I didn't know what to do with it.
I didn't know if it was real." Petra's voice was careful.
"I should have shown you sooner.
I'm sorry I didn't."
She took the phone and read.
The messages were from her own number.
Sent to a contact saved as *R.* The timestamps ran across fourteen months.
The content was specific: amounts of money, account numbers, transfer dates, and instructions about timing.
Instructions about how to move funds without triggering a joint account alert.
Instructions about how to make it look like ordinary household spending.
She scrolled to the bottom.
The last message was dated six weeks before she had filed for divorce.
*He still doesn't suspect anything.
We're almost ready.*
She lowered the phone.
"Who is R?" Petra asked.
"I don't know."
"You don't know, or you don't want to say?"
She looked at Petra directly.
"I don't know.
I didn't send these."
Petra held her gaze for a long moment.
"Okay," she said.
"You believe me?"
"I believe that you believe it." Petra took the phone back.
"But someone used your number.
Someone who had access to your phone or your account.
And someone was helping you move money out of the marriage before you filed — whether you knew about it or not."
The coffee was getting cold in her hand.
"Daniel has this," she said.
It wasn't a question.
"If someone sent it to me anonymously," Petra said, "they sent it to him too."
She thought about the letter.
*I had already seen enough to know I needed to be careful.* She thought about the joint account drawn down to nine thousand dollars.
She had assumed Daniel had moved the money.
But what if the money had already been moved — by someone else, using her name — and Daniel had simply responded?
"Someone set me up," she said.
"Or," Petra said carefully, "someone was helping you in a way you didn't fully understand, and it went further than you knew."
She thought about the word *R.* One letter.
A contact saved with no name.
She thought about who in her life had known, fourteen months ago, that she was planning to leave.
One person.
May you like
Her hand tightened around the coffee cup.
"I need to make a call," she said.
