His lawyer was good. Derek had always known how to find the right person for the right job.

What Derek did not know was that I had also found the right person for the right job.

Her name was Attorney Pollson.

She was 44, small, and had a way of sitting in a courtroom like she had built it herself.

Mara had found her through a colleague. She specialized in asset protection and marital fraud.

And when I sat across from her in her office and told her everything, she didn’t look horrified or sympathetic or any of the things people had been looking at me.

She looked interested.

“He moved the money to an account in his name only?” she asked.

“Detective Rivera confirmed it.”

“And the life insurance policy was opened 14 months ago?”

“Yes.”

She nodded slowly.

“Was the premium coming out of your joint account?”

I hadn’t thought to ask. I looked at Mara.

“It was,” Mara said, who had apparently thought to ask. “I pulled the statements.”

Attorney Pollson smiled. Just slightly.

“Good.”

The day of the hearing, I wore a dark green blazer I had bought the year I opened my practice.

I’d worn it to every significant professional moment since.

It felt right.

Derek was already in the courtroom with his attorney when we arrived.

He turned when I walked in, and I watched the color leave his face in real time, like someone had pulled a drain.

He had believed I didn’t know.

Or he had believed that even if I suspected, I didn’t have proof.

Or, and I think this is closer to the truth, he had believed what he always believed, which was that I would be too overwhelmed, too soft, too attached to the life we had built together to really come for him.

He didn’t know me as well as he thought.

Attorney Pollson presented the financial records first.

The wire transfers. The withdrawals. The account in Derek’s name.

She laid each document on the table with the quiet efficiency of someone who had done this many times and enjoyed it every single time.

“The opposing party claims my client is making reckless financial decisions,” she said. “What the record actually shows is that the opposing party has transferred $80,000 from my client’s accounts, funded entirely by my client’s income from her practice, into a personal account without her knowledge or consent over 18 months.”

Derek’s attorney tried to object.

The judge let Attorney Pollson continue.

She presented the life insurance policy next.

She let it sit for a moment.

“The policy was opened 14 months ago,” she said. “The premiums have been paid from the joint account. My client did not sign this policy. Her signature on the application does not match any verified sample of her signature on record. We have a forensic document examiner prepared to testify to that.”

Derek’s attorney was writing very quickly.

Attorney Pollson looked briefly at Derek.

“We also have the toxicology report from St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Denver. The security footage from the coffee shop at O’Hare. Financial records connecting the opposing party to the individual who supplied the compound used to drug my client.”

And she paused.

“The text message record between the opposing party and one Sasha Vance, spanning 26 months, which includes a message sent the evening before my client’s flight that reads, and I quote directly from exhibit 14: It’s done. She’s on the 7 a.m. She won’t make it to Seattle.”

The courtroom was completely silent.

Derek made a sound.

Not words.

Just a sound.

The judge looked at Derek over the top of his glasses for a long moment.

I didn’t look at Derek.

I had decided on this in advance. I would not give him the moment of my eyes on him when he was exposed.

I looked at the middle distance, at some neutral point past the table, and I breathed.

His attorney asked for a recess.

The judge denied it.

Detective Rivera, who had been sitting at the back of the room, came forward. There were two officers with her.

Derek stood up when he understood what was happening.

“Clare.”

His voice was uneven.

“Clare, listen to me. It wasn’t… It wasn’t what it looks like. I wasn’t going to…”

“Mr. Mercer.”

Detective Rivera was beside him.

“You have the right to remain silent.”

“Clare, please.”

He said my name two more times while they walked him out.

I didn’t turn around.

I kept my eyes forward until the door closed.

Then I put my face in my hands, and I sat there for a minute.

Just one minute.

Mara put her hand on my back.

My mother, who had driven 8 hours and taken two weeks off from her retirement to sit in a folding chair in a Denver hospital room and then again in a Columbus kitchen feeding me soup, put her hand on my arm.

“It’s done,” my mother said quietly.

“Not done,” Attorney Pollson said, already gathering papers. “But the hardest part is.”

Kevin called me 2 weeks after the hearing.

He’d clearly rehearsed.

He told me he was sorry.

He told me he hadn’t known the extent of it. Hadn’t known about the drug. Had thought it was just an affair and it wasn’t his place.

He used the phrase wasn’t my place twice.

I let him finish.

Then I said, “Kevin, I was on a plane unconscious. At 31 years old, I was on a plane, and I could have died, and you knew something was wrong.”

Silence.

“I know you didn’t know how bad it was,” I said. “I believe you. But you knew something, and you chose not to say anything to anyone, and that’s something you and Jenna are going to have to figure out.”

I ended the call.