Chapter 4: What the Billing Account Remembered
My colleague Marcus had been a forensic investigator for eleven years before he joined our firm.
He owed me a favor from a case two years ago that I had never collected.
I collected it that Tuesday.
"I need a name attached to a number," I told him over the phone.
"Unofficial.
Just a starting point."
"Text it to me," he said.
"Give me a few hours."
I was still in the hospital.
The discharge nurse had come and gone.
Dad had brought a bag of things from home — clothes, my laptop, the small notebook I kept in the kitchen drawer.
He didn't ask why I wanted the laptop.
He just brought it.
Rowan came back that evening with takeout containers and a careful smile.
He sat beside the bed.
He held Leo for twenty minutes.
He told a story about something funny Selina had said at the birthday dinner, and he laughed at his own story, and I watched him laugh.
"You seem calmer," he said.
"I am," I said.
"Good." He squeezed my hand.
"I know I let you down.
I'm going to fix that."
"I know you will," I said.
He smiled.
He thought that meant something.
Marcus called at nine that night, after Rowan had gone home to "get the house ready." His words.
"The number is registered to a woman named Cara Finch," Marcus said.
"Twenty-nine.
She's a property manager for a rental company in Dellwood."
I wrote the name down.
"How long has that number been in contact with my husband's line?"
A pause.
"Based on what you sent me — the billing records — the first call was fourteen months ago."
Fourteen months.
Leo was three days old.
"Phoebe," Marcus said carefully.
"Do you want me to keep going?"
"Yes," I said.
"Keep going."
I hung up and sat in the dark hospital room with my son sleeping in the bassinet beside me.
The monitor beeped softly.
Down the hall, someone was laughing at something on television.
Fourteen months.
I thought about every argument we'd had in the past year.
Every night Rowan had come home late.
Every weekend he had driven to his mother's house alone, or so he'd said.
Every time I had reached for him and he had turned away, and I had told myself it was stress, it was the pregnancy, it was just a hard season.
I opened my laptop.
I pulled up the shared expense account — the one Rowan used for what he called "household management." He had never questioned why I handled the finances.
He thought it was because I was organized.
It was because I was trained.
The first entry that didn't belong appeared in March of the previous year.
A restaurant I didn't recognize.
A florist charge on a Tuesday.
A hotel booking in a town we had never visited together, paid with the joint card and categorized under "travel — work."
I kept scrolling.
By midnight I had seventeen entries.
I didn't feel angry.
That surprised me.
I felt something quieter and more dangerous — the particular stillness of a person who has stopped being surprised and started being certain.
I created a new folder on my desktop.
I named it simply: *Leo.*
Everything went into it.
Then my phone buzzed.
A text from Rowan.
*House looks great.
Fresh sheets on the bed.
Can't wait to bring you both home tomorrow.
I love you.*
I read it twice.
Then I typed back: *We'll talk when I get home.*
I set the phone face-down on the tray table.
In the bassinet, Leo made a small sound and settled.
I reached in and put one finger against his palm.
His hand closed around it automatically, the way newborns do, without thought, without condition.
"I've got you," I said quietly.
"Whatever happens.
I've got you."
My laptop was still open.
May you like
The folder named *Leo* had seventeen files in it.
By morning, it would have more.
