Chapter 3The Traitors Under My Roof

The next morning, I didn't go looking for Greg.

I went straight to the bank.

I waited in line for forty minutes and requested three years' worth of bank statements.

Eleven pages of standard A4 paper.

I sat in one of the uncomfortable chairs in the lobby, going through them line by line.

Mortgage: $2,400. Automatically deducted on the 15th of every month. Thirty-six transactions. Next to each one, the memo line read: Mortgage Auto-Pay.

All of it from my account.

Did Greg ever transfer money to me?

Yes.

I found them—at the end of every month, he would send a small, random amount. The highest was $400. The lowest was $100.

The memo line always read: Groceries.

A few hundred bucks.

My mortgage was two-point-four thousand.

He gave me a few hundred bucks.

I kept tracing my finger down the pages.

In November, I spotted a massive withdrawal. I didn't recognize it. It wasn't the mortgage, and it wasn't a credit card payment.

$4,000. Flat.

Transferred to an account under the name "Bethany Clark."

I didn't know that name.

Wait.

I did.

Yesterday, standing in my master bedroom, the woman holding the baby... Greg had called her Bethany.

November.

I hadn't even left for my work trip yet.

What was I doing in November? I pulled up my phone's calendar app.

November 18th, project review. November 25th, a three-day business trip to Chicago.

It was during those three days in Chicago.

Four thousand dollars.

I kept scrolling down the pages.

December: Transferred to Bethany Clark, $2,500.

January: Transferred to Bethany Clark, $5,000.

January also had another transfer: Transferred to Barbara Zhou, $15,000.

Fifteen thousand dollars.

To his mother.

The memo line was blank.

I dropped the papers onto my lap and leaned my head back against the wall.

The AC in the bank lobby was blasting, freezing the sweat on my neck. A little kid was running in circles near the teller line, his exhausted mother trailing behind him, whispering, "Slow down, please slow down."

I remembered something.

In January, Greg had come home looking defeated, telling me his company had slashed end-of-year bonuses. He said he barely got a thousand dollars.

He had sighed, rubbed his temples, and said, "The economy is just brutal right now. Everyone's taking a hit."

And that exact same month, he wired fifteen thousand dollars to his mother. And five thousand to Bethany.

Twenty grand.

From a guy whose bonus was "barely a thousand dollars."

Where did that money come from?

I kept reading.

February, March. The frequency of transfers to Bethany skyrocketed. In March alone, there were three separate wires. Totaling $9,000.

March.

The month I left for Arizona.

Nine thousand dollars wired directly to her.

In that same exact month, my account was drained of $2,400 for our house.

While I was out in the desert sun working myself to the bone, getting chemical burns from cheap sunscreen and drywall dust, he was funding another woman's life.

I neatly folded the statements and slipped them into my tote bag.

I walked out of the bank. Took about fifteen steps down the sidewalk.

Stopped.

I turned around and marched right back inside.

I asked the teller to print the statements for the joint credit card. Technically, it was a supplementary card under my primary account, but I had given it to Greg to "make grocery runs and paying the utility bills easier."

The printer whirred.

I scanned the charges.

A purchase at a high-end baby boutique: $850. January.

A charge at a private women's clinic: $400. December.

December.

The clinic.

I was home in December.

I was sleeping in the same bed as him.

He would go to "work" during the day, and come home at night to eat the dinners I cooked.

I even remembered a specific night in December when he came home incredibly late. I had asked him if everything was okay.

He had loosened his tie, looking exhausted. "Team dinner. Had a couple of beers."

I had gotten up from the couch to pour him a glass of warm water.

He drank it, smiled, and said, "Thanks, honey."

Thanks, honey.

He had just come back from the maternity ward.

I folded the credit card statements and shoved them into my bag, too.

I stood on the sidewalk outside the bank.

The sun was blinding. Late June. Suffocatingly hot.

I pulled out my phone and texted Sarah: I need you to recommend a lawyer. The best divorce attorney you know.

Before I could lock the screen, a notification popped up.

My mother-in-law, Barbara: Harper, come over to our house for dinner tonight. We're a family, we need to sit down and talk this out. Don't sit in some hotel room letting your mind go to dark places.

Dark places.

She thought I was having a breakdown.

Another text immediately followed: Bethany isn't a bad girl. At the end of the day, she gave our family a grandson to carry on the name, and that—

I didn't even read the rest.

I screenshotted the messages. Saved them to a hidden folder.

Then I typed three words and hit send: I understand perfectly.

I didn't go to dinner.

That night, alone in my motel room, I spread the three years' worth of bank statements and credit card bills across the cheap bedspread.

And I read every single line.