We can sort this out.”
Home.
The word once meant safety.
Now I saw the apartment differently: the passwords he controlled, the statements he opened first, the questions whenever I stayed fifteen minutes late at the library, the friends I stopped seeing because it was easier than enduring another fight.
“No,” I said.
It was the smallest word I had spoken all evening.
It changed everything.
Derek stared at me.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m not going home with you.”
His smile disappeared.
“You’re my wife.”
Catherine turned her face toward him.
“Not property.
Wife.
You may want to remember the distinction.”
A murmur moved through the people around us.
Derek’s embarrassment became anger.
“You don’t know anything about us.”
“I know what Olivia told me.
I also know what the records show.”
He pointed at the folder.
“Those are private financial records.”
“They are records from accounts bearing Olivia’s name,” Catherine said.
That stopped him.
He looked at me with an expression I had seen many times at home—the warning before the punishment.
Normally it made me rush to fix whatever I had done.
This time, I noticed something I had never noticed before.
The look only worked if I obeyed it.
I didn’t.
“How much?” I asked.
Derek frowned.
“What?”
“How much of our savings did you spend?”
“We are not discussing this here.”
“Then answer somewhere else.
Catherine’s lawyer has already requested the full accounting.”
For the first time, genuine fear crossed his face.
He recovered quickly.
“You got a lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“Because of one argument?”
I almost laughed.
One argument.
As if the bus stop had created the problem instead of revealing it.
Catherine’s lawyer, Mr.
Hale, had explained the numbers to me that afternoon.
The missing money had not vanished in one dramatic theft.
Derek had been careful.
Transfers.
Cash withdrawals.
Charges disguised among ordinary household expenses.
Small enough individually that I had never noticed.
Together, they formed a pattern.
My wages had gone into the joint account every month.
Derek had repeatedly moved money out.
