Chapter 3
GETTING HELP…JUST NOT THE KIND MY HUSBAND SUGGESTED
I’m about to walk into a stranger’s office and ask him to investigate my husband.
My husband. The man I married. The man who cried during his vows and carried me over the threshold and drove ninety miles an hour to the hospital when I went into labor three weeks early.
I’m going to sit across a desk from some guy I’ve never met and say I think my husband is cheating on me and he stole my dead grandmother’s ring to do it and that sentence is going to come out of my mouth and be true.
My eyes are burning. I press my palms flat against my thighs and push down hard enough to feel my nails through the fabric. Not here. Not in this parking lot. I can fall apart later.
I grab the folder and get out of the car before I can change my mind.
The hallway on the second floor is bright and smells like new carpet. Suite 214 has a plain door with a brass nameplate. I knock and it opens before my knuckles land a third time.
“Sloane Larson?”
“Yes.”
“Come in.”
Carter Graves doesn’t look like a private investigator. He looks like someone who runs in the morning and files things alphabetically. Clean jaw, dark hair, rolled sleeves. His office is small—one desk, two chairs, a filing cabinet. A laptop and a legal pad with a pen lined up next to it.
He pulls out the chair across from his desk. I sit. My knee is bouncing and I press my foot flat to stop it.
“Tell me what you have.”
I open the folder and the first thing I see is Francis’s resizing work order with Drew’s name in black ink and I have to close my eyes for a second because the rage is right there, right behind my teeth, so hot it tastes like metal.
“My husband took my wedding ring. I hadn’t been wearing it for months, because of the weight I gained during pregnancy, and that I still haven’t lost.” My voice comes out raw.
I didn’t plan that. “He took it from our bedroom while I was up every three hours with our daughter and he brought it to the jeweler who built it and had it resized. Smaller. To a size I’ve never worn. ”
I slide the work order across. Carter reads it. I keep going because if I stop I’ll start crying.
“I thought the ring was lost. For months. I asked him about it almost every night and every single night he looked at me and said we’ll find it, babe.
” My voice cracks on the last word and I hate it.
I hate that I’m cracking in front of this man.
“He watched me cry about it. He held my hand and told me we’d find it and he had it the whole time. ”
Carter sets the page down. “How did you find out?”
“The jeweler called our house. Checking that the resize fit. I didn’t know my husband knew where the ring was, much less had it.”
“And after the call?”
“My friend Kellee and I went through his laptop.” I pull out the printout of the Pacific Coast login page.
“This was bookmarked in his browser. We bank at Chase—I’ve never heard of Pacific Coast Credit Union.
I tried every password I could think of.
” My jaw is aching from clenching. “He picked one I wouldn’t know. He must have done that on purpose.”
Carter takes the printout. Sets it next to the work order.
“Then we found the credit card charges.” I can feel the tears starting and I’m so goddamn angry at myself for it. I’m not sad. I’m furious. But my body doesn’t know the difference and my eyes are doing whatever they want. “Five months of restaurants. All tagged to a woman named Patty Yates.”
I pull out my phone. Swipe to the screenshot. Patty’s hand on a man’s chest, face cropped at the chin, and my grandmother’s diamond catching the light on her ring finger.
“She’s wearing my ring. In an engagement photo.”
I put the phone on the desk and my hand is trembling so hard the phone rattles against the wood. I pull my hand back into my lap and squeeze my fingers together until the knuckles go white.
“That ring.” My throat is closing. I swallow hard. “My grandmother wore that diamond for forty-one years. She wore it when she braided my hair. She wore it at my mother’s funeral. Drew’s grandmother’s sapphire is the other stone. Both of them are dead. Our mothers are dead. That ring was—it was—”
I can’t finish. The sentence just stops and I’m sitting in a stranger’s office with tears running down my face and I want to put my fist through the wall because I should not be here. I should be home with my baby. My husband should not have done this to me.
Carter doesn’t hand me a tissue. He doesn’t say he’s sorry. He waits.
I wipe my face with the back of my hand and pull Francis’s provenance documentation from the folder. “The jeweler has original sketches, stone records, everything documented. He confirmed the ring in the photo matches his father’s work. He’ll testify.”
Carter picks up each page. Reads every line. Lays them out across the desk in a neat row.
“How old is your daughter?”
My chin trembles. “Eight months.”
He writes it down.
“Here’s what I can do. The bank account—I can identify it, pull details, find out where the money’s moving and how long it’s been going on. The woman—I can build the full picture. Timeline, scope, whether this is what you think it is. I put together a documented summary with everything I find.”
“How much?”
He gives me a number and my stomach drops. The checking account Kellee helped me open has enough for a retainer. Maybe. If nothing else goes wrong this month. And everything has been going wrong this month.
“I can do the retainer now.” I pull out the checkbook—the personal one, from before the marriage. The account Drew has never touched because there was never enough in it to bother with. “The balance when you deliver.”
“That works.”
I write the check. The pen shakes in my hand and the numbers come out crooked and I don’t care. I tear it along the perforation and slide it across the desk.
Carter takes it. He pulls a folder from his drawer—my name already on the tab, already printed, already waiting.
“You don’t need me to tell you this is bad,” he says. “You need me to tell you how bad. Give me ten days.”
“Fine. Ten days.”
“Your phone number. Not the house line. And save my contact under something he wouldn’t question.”
“Like what?”
“Dentist. Pediatrician’s office. Whatever’s boring.”
I stand up. My legs are shaking. Everything is shaking. I pick up the folder—lighter now, copies left behind—and I’m almost at the door when Carter says my name.
“Sloane.”
I turn.
“You did the right thing coming in.”
I nod because if I open my mouth again I’m going to sob and I’ve already cried enough in this man’s office.
I walk out into the bright hallway and the Sacramento heat hits me through the window at the end of the corridor and I stand there pressing my back against the wall until my breathing slows down.
I just hired a private investigator to follow my husband.
That’s my life now.
Drew is on the living room floor building a block tower and Audrey is losing her mind over it.
“Ready? Reaaaady?” He balances the green block on top, holds both hands up like a surgeon. “BOOM.”
He flicks the tower with one finger. Blocks scatter. Audrey shrieks so loud my ears ring—that full-body, face-crunching belly laugh where she kicks both legs and her fists curl and she tips sideways on the rug from the force of her own joy.
“Again!” Drew says, and he’s already stacking. “Audrey wants destruction. Audrey is a CHAOS MONSTER.”
She grabs for the blocks before he can finish. The tower goes down at two. Drew clutches his chest.
“She didn’t even let me get to three. Ruthless. Absolutely ruthless.”
Audrey crawls into his lap and shoves her whole fist into his mouth. He pretends to eat it, making chomping sounds. She screams and yanks it back and then shoves it in again.
“Oh, delicious. Tastes like sweet potatoes and CHAOS.”
She’s laughing so hard she’s hiccupping. Drew pulls her against his chest and kisses the top of her head—that slow, soft press where he closes his eyes for a second—and my heart squeezes so tight I can’t breathe.
Because he’s good with her. Right now, in this moment, on this rug, he is so good with her.
Have I made a mistake?
The thought hits me like cold water. What if I’m wrong?
What if the bank account has an explanation?
What if Patty Yates is a cousin, a coworker, someone whose engagement photo I misread through the blur of sleep deprivation and postpartum paranoia?
What if I just hired a private investigator because I’m exhausted and suspicious and my brain has turned on the one person who’s still here?
Drew blows a raspberry on Audrey’s belly. She grabs fistfuls of his hair and yanks. He winces, laughs, gently unpeels her fingers.
“Ow. Ow. Your daughter is assaulting me.”
“She gets it from my side.”
“Clearly.” He grins up at me. That grin. Crooked, warm, real. “Come down here. Join the chaos.”
I lower myself onto the rug. Audrey immediately abandons Drew and crawls into my lap. She grabs my shirt with both fists and presses her face into my chest and makes that little humming sound that means she’s settling. Drew watches her choose me. His mouth twitches.
“See? I do all the work and you get all the credit.”
“Welcome to motherhood.”
He laughs. Picks up a yellow block and turns it in his fingers.
Sunlight through the blinds, warm stripes across the rug.
Audrey’s weight in my lap, her breath slowing against my collarbone.
My husband on the floor with his messy hair and his easy laugh and I want so badly for this to be real.
I want the bank account to have an explanation.
I want the ring to have been a mistake. I want to call Carter Graves and say never mind, I was wrong, I’m just tired.
“So.” Drew sets the block down. “Did you ever call that therapist? Dr. Rhodes?”
“I did.” I keep my voice soft. A little shy. Like it was hard for me and I’m proud of myself for doing it. “I have an appointment next week.”
“Babe.” His whole face opens up. “That’s really great.”
“It’s just a phone call.”
“No, it’s more than that. It takes guts.” He shifts closer on the rug and puts his hand on my knee. “I’m proud of you.”
I smile at him. My face is a mask and the mask is holding.
“I just think it’ll be really good,” he says. “You know? With the crying and everything. The sleep. You’ve been running on fumes for months.”
“I know.”
“And Audrey needs you at your best. She deserves—I mean, we both want her to have the best version of her mom, right?”
Everything stops.
The best version of her mom. The best version.
Like the current version—the one who gets up every three hours and does every feeding and every bath and every 2 a.m. walk around the living room while he sleeps through it—like that version isn’t good enough.
Like I’m a rough draft and therapy will produce the final copy.
Like Audrey deserves better than me right now, the me who is tired and unwashed and trying so hard my bones ache.
“What does that mean?” My voice is very quiet.
“What?”
“The best version of her mom. What does that mean?”
Drew blinks. “I just meant—you know. When you’re feeling better. More like yourself.”
“I feel like myself.”
“Okay.” He puts his hands up. That careful, measured, let’s not escalate this gesture. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I just want you to be happy.”
But the warmth that was in my chest five seconds ago is gone.
Incinerated. Because he didn’t say you’re a great mom.
He said Audrey deserves the best version.
Like he’s building a case that the current version isn’t enough.
Like he’s rehearsed this exact phrasing because it sounds gentle and loving and no one would question it unless they were sitting where I’m sitting, with a check for a private investigator clearing from an account he doesn’t know about.
Audrey squirms in my lap. I adjust her weight against my shoulder and press my nose into her hair and breathe in her warm bread smell and hold on.
“Hey.” Drew reaches over and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “I love you. You know that, right?”
“I know.”
“This is going to be a really good thing. Dr. Rhodes. I can feel it.”
“Yeah.” I kiss Audrey’s head. “Me too.”
He leans back on his hands, stretches his legs out on the rug. Satisfied. Settled. The concerned husband who encouraged his struggling wife to get help. He’ll sleep well tonight.
I look at his profile against the window.
The jaw I used to trace with my finger. The collarbone I used to press my mouth against. Who the hell are you?
Who is this man I sleep next to every night?
Because the person on this rug is my husband.
He smells like my husband and laughs like my husband and loves our daughter like my husband.
But my husband doesn’t have a secret bank account.
My husband doesn’t buy five months of dinners for another woman.
My husband doesn’t steal his wife’s wedding ring and put it on someone else’s finger.
So who is this man I’m living with?
“Want me to start bath time?” Drew asks, already getting up.
“Sure. I’ll get her stuff.”
He scoops Audrey off my lap and carries her toward the stairs, bouncing her on his hip. She grabs his ear and he yelps and she laughs.
“ASSAULT. I’m calling the authorities.”
His voice drifts up from the hallway. Easy. Light. A man with nothing to hide.
I stand in the empty living room with the scattered blocks and the late sun making everything golden and I dig my nails into my palms until I feel the sting break through.
Ten days.