Chapter 3
Inside were six months of receipts. Hotel stays in cities he'd claimed were "business trips." A jewelry store charge for a tennis bracelet I never received. Dinner reservations at restaurants he'd told me were closed for renovation. Every single one tied to the same name.
Kayla Jensen.
I wasn't even surprised anymore. That was the part that scared me.
That evening my best friend Rachel refused to let me sit in that house alone, and dragged me out to the grocery store for air I didn't think I needed. That's where we saw them. Scott and Kayla, laughing in the wine aisle, her cart loaded with filet mignon and a bottle of champagne, her hand resting on his forearm like she'd been doing it for years instead of months. He looked at me once, across the store, and then looked away, deliberate and clean, like eight years of marriage had never happened.
That night he called again. "Don't forget the keys." A pause, long enough for him to enjoy it. "Oh, one more thing. Kayla's pregnant. We're getting married next month."
Three days later, Rachel physically walked me into the office of attorney Jerome Carter, a sharp, unhurried man with reading glasses perched on the end of his nose and a reputation for never losing. He listened to the whole story without interrupting once. When I finished, he asked only one question.
"What was your husband's grandmother's full name?"
He spent the better part of an hour searching probate records on his computer while I sat there twisting my wedding ring, the one I still hadn't been able to make myself take off. Then his expression shifted, and he looked up at me over his glasses.
"Avery, I need a copy of that will. Today, if you can get it."
It took me two more days and a very persistent phone call to the estate attorney, but I got it. Jerome read it that same afternoon behind his closed office door, and when he called me back in, he slid the document across his desk with one paragraph highlighted in yellow.
May you like
I read it. My heart skipped, then steadied into something colder and sharper than fear.
Every cruel word Scott had said on that phone call, every rushed deadline, every note that said no drama, suddenly made perfect, ugly sense. He hadn't been confident. He'd been racing a clock he thought I'd never see.
