Chapter 3
JUST ACT NORMAL
Colleen’s receptionist waves me straight back. I sit across from her and put the envelope on the desk between us.
“How are you holding up?”
“I’m not.”
She nods. “Walk me through what’s happened since we talked on the phone.”
“I watched my husband have sex with the nanny. On our nursery camera. While my son was crying in his crib three feet away. I went home and sat across from him at dinner.” My voice doesn’t crack. I’m past cracking. “He doesn’t know I saw.”
“Good. Let’s keep it that way.” She opens the envelope and starts reading. She moves through the first pages fast, then slows down. Her pen taps twice on a paragraph near the middle. “Tell me what you understood about the infidelity provisions when you signed this.”
“Nothing. His family’s lawyer handled everything. He told me it was all standard.”
“It’s not standard.” She turns the document toward me. “This clause states that in the event of proven infidelity by either party, the injured spouse receives an enhanced distribution of marital assets. With the video you have, this provision is triggered.”
“What does that mean for me?”
“It means you’re in a strong position already.
The footage alone entitles you to a significantly larger share than a typical divorce settlement.
” She flips forward a page and taps another paragraph.
“But this is the one that matters. This is a custody-asset provision. The primary custodial parent controls the marital share of company stock.”
“So whoever gets the kids—”
“Controls voting shares in the company. Which means custody isn’t just about your children. It’s about who runs the business.”
My stomach turns over slowly. I press my hands flat on my thighs. “Is that why he’s doing this? The nanny reporting on me, the comments about my memory, all of it—is that about custody?”
“I think what your husband has been doing is premeditated.” She says this calmly. “The pattern you described to me on the phone—undermining your confidence, positioning the nanny as the more competent caregiver, building a record of you as unreliable—that’s intentional.”
“For taking the kids.”
“For controlling the outcome.”
I sit there. The chair feels too hard. Everything in the room feels too hard—the desk, the light, the sound of the clock ticking on the wall behind her.
“So what do we need?”
She pulls the legal pad toward her. “Financial records. I want to understand the full scope of his assets—what’s in his name, what’s in the company’s name, what might be hidden in accounts you don’t know about.
Men like Preston don’t keep everything visible.
There will be accounts, transfers, payments that aren’t on any statement you’ve seen. ”
“Where do I look?”
“Family computer. His phone if you can access it. Bank logins, credit cards, anything with auto-filled passwords. You’re looking for money going places you can’t explain—payments to people you don’t recognize, transfers to accounts you’ve never heard of.
” She writes while she talks. “This also helps us establish a timeline. How long has this been going on? You saw the camera footage once. How far back does the archive go?”
“I don’t know. A few weeks? Maybe a month?”
“Check. The cloud storage may go back further. If there are more recordings, save everything. Back it up somewhere he’ll never look.”
“A separate email account.”
“Perfect. Don’t access it from any device he uses.
” She tears the page from the legal pad and slides it across the desk.
“This is what to look for. Financial records, camera footage, anything that shows the scope of what he’s built.
We already have the infidelity evidence we need. Now I want to know what he’s hiding.”
I fold the page and put it in my bag. My hands are steady. That scares me—how steady they are.
“Sophie.” I look up. “You have a strong case. What you saw on that camera gives you leverage he doesn’t know about. Don’t spend it. Go home, act normal, and start looking.”
I drive home with both hands on the wheel and the road blurring in and out of focus.
Preston is at a client dinner. Ana is upstairs giving the kids a bath—I can hear Abby singing through the ceiling, something about a mermaid, her voice floating down through the vents.
I sit at the family desktop in the hallway nook and turn the screen brightness as low as it goes.
Colleen asked how far back the recordings go.
The archive holds thirty days of motion-triggered clips.
I scroll backward through the thumbnails—Ana picking Mitch up, putting him down.
Me rocking him at two in the morning. Abby dragging a stuffed animal into the crib with him.
Then I find one. Nine days before the Target parking lot. Naptime. The camera angle is wrong—tilted toward the wall—but the dresser mirror catches everything. Preston and Ana in the nursery with the door shut. His mouth on her neck. Her hands pulling his shirt loose. The glider rocking.
I watch long enough to be sure. Then I download the file and upload it to the Gmail account I created last night—fake name, password he’d never guess. My fingers are clumsy on the keys. Something thick and hot is lodged in my throat and every time I swallow it pushes back up.
I close the app and open his bank account. Every password auto-fills.
Three months of checking account statements. Mortgage, utilities, golf club, grocery store. Then a recurring transfer to a bank account I’ve never seen before. There are other expenses that even I can recognize don’t look right. And there are months of them.
The bathwater shuts off upstairs. Abby stops singing. Ana’s footsteps cross the landing—”Arms up, Abby, let’s do jammies”—and I minimize everything and pull up a recipe site. My pulse is hammering in my jaw.
Footsteps on the stairs. She comes around the corner and stops when she sees me.
“Oh—I didn’t know you were down here.”
“Just looking something up.”
She lingers. Shifts the towel on her shoulder. I keep my hand easy on the mouse, my face empty.
“Mitch is down. Abby wants you to read to her.”
“I’ll be up in a minute.”
“Is everything okay, Mrs. Sophie?”
My fingernails dig into my palm under the desk. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I don’t know. You seem... like something’s bothering you.”
Yes, it bothers me that I saw you fucking my husband.
I turn and look at her. She’s standing in the hallway in leggings and a damp T-shirt, head tilted, concerned.
Checking in on the fragile mom. I can practically hear tonight’s entry already—Sophie seemed withdrawn and secretive.
She was defensive when I asked how she was feeling.
“I’m fine, Ana. You can head out.”
“You’d tell me, right? If you needed anything?”
“Of course.”
“Because I worry about you. You do so much.”
This conniving bitch is standing in my hallway telling me she worries about me. This woman who rides my husband on the glider where I nursed my son. Who lets my baby scream and doesn’t pick him up.
“I appreciate that,” I say. “Goodnight, Ana.”
Her smile flickers. She’s not used to me cutting her off. The warmth drains from her face for just a second before she catches it.
“Goodnight.” She grabs her keys from the kitchen counter and the front door opens and closes. The Jetta starts in the driveway and pulls away.
I turn back to the screen and open the browser.
Preston has a second email address. In its Sent folder, I find a thread with Ana that goes back months. Her messages read nothing like the woman who just stood in my hallway.
Sophie seemed very anxious today. She snapped at Abby over a spilled cup and locked herself in the bedroom for twenty minutes. I’m concerned about her ability to manage the children’s needs on her own.
That day. Abby knocked milk into the silverware drawer. I said “Abby, be careful.” I walked to the linen closet for a towel. Half a minute, not twenty.
Sophie cried for no apparent reason this afternoon. She was unable to explain what was wrong. The children were confused and upset.
Abby fell off the monkey bars. I held her in my lap on the park bench and put Band-Aids on her knees while she sobbed. I cried because my four-year-old was bleeding. Ana stood ten feet away and watched and then went home and wrote it up like a clinical intake.
I scroll through months of this. Every entry is a real moment from my life, warped just enough to sound alarming. A catalogue of a woman who doesn’t exist—a Sophie who screams and hides and forgets and falls apart.
Then I find his reply. Under a report about a day I spent baking cookies with Abby.
Keep documenting. My lawyer says we need six more months of this.
I read it until the words stop looking like words and start looking like what they are—a countdown. Six more months of fabricated evidence. Six more months until they walk into a courtroom with a paper trail that says I can’t take care of my own children.
I forward it to Colleen.