Chapter 6: The Storage Unit
Frederick's fever broke at 2 a.m.
The urgent care doctor said it was a common ear infection, gave us a prescription, and sent us home with instructions to follow up in three days.
Amy sat in the back seat with him on the drive home, one hand resting on his chest, feeling him breathe.
I drove and said nothing.
Our house was empty when we got back.
The police had cleared everyone out.
Someone had stacked the serving trays by the back door and turned off most of the lights.
The birthday decorations were still up — the banner, the balloons, the little paper stars Amy had hung from the ceiling two days ago when she still thought this would be a normal party.
I took them down while Amy put Frederick to bed.
She found me in the kitchen, pulling tape off the wall.
"Leave it," she said.
"I'll do it tomorrow."
"I'm almost done."
She sat at the table and watched me finish.
When I pulled the last star down and folded it in my hand, she said, "Officer Calloway called while you were driving.
They got into the storage unit."
I turned around.
"They found the recordings," Amy said.
"Forty-one of them.
Phone calls between me and Teresa going back eighteen months.
Calloway said some of them have been edited — she could tell because the audio quality changes mid-sentence." Amy's hands were flat on the table.
"Some of them haven't been edited.
Those are the ones where Teresa tells me what she's going to do to us if I say anything."
I sat down across from her.
"She threatened you forty-one times," I said.
"Not all of them are threats.
Some are just her talking.
Telling me I'm not good enough for you.
That I don't understand how your family works.
That you'll choose her over me eventually because that's what you've always done." Amy looked at the table.
"I used to hang up and then sit in the bathroom until I stopped shaking so you wouldn't see."
"Amy—"
"I'm not telling you this so you'll feel guilty," she said quickly.
"I'm telling you because Calloway is going to want me to give a statement, and I needed to say it out loud to someone first.
To you.
Before I say it to them."
I reached across the table.
She let me take her hand.
"I'm sorry I didn't see it," I said.
"She was careful." Amy looked up.
"She was very careful, Connor.
She knew exactly how to talk to you and exactly how to talk to me, and she kept those two conversations completely separate.
That wasn't an accident.
She practiced it."
I thought about the emails to Gerald Fitch.
The spreadsheet she had shown Betsy.
The forged power of attorney dated eleven months ago.
The storage unit full of recordings.
Fourteen months of careful, patient construction.
"Calloway also said," Amy continued, "that they found a second folder in the unit.
Property listings.
Three of them, in Florida.
Retirement communities." She paused.
"One of them had a deposit receipt clipped to the front.
Ten thousand dollars.
Paid four months ago."
I stared at her.
"She was already buying somewhere to live," Amy said.
"With our money."
The deposit receipt.
The Florida listings.
The power of attorney that would have given her control of everything the moment she needed it.
She hadn't been planning to st*al from us and disappear.
She had been planning to st*al from us and retire.
Comfortably.
While we watched.
My phone lit up on the table.
A Nashville number I didn't recognize.
I answered it.
"Mr.
Bradley." A man's voice, older, careful.
"My name is Gerald Fitch.
I know it's late.
I wouldn't call if it wasn't important."
Amy watched my face.
"I'm listening," I said.
"I need you to know that I ended my involvement with your mother eight months ago," Fitch said.
"When she told me she had handled the signature issue herself, I understood what that meant and I withdrew.
I have a letter on file documenting my withdrawal and the reason for it." A pause.
"I also have the original draft documents she brought to me — before the signatures were added.
Those drafts show my work and hers separately.
I'm prepared to hand everything over to the police.
But I wanted you to hear it from me first."
"Why?"
"Because," Fitch said slowly, "when I withdrew, your mother told me she had a backup plan.
She said that if the property transfer was ever challenged, she had something that would make you question your wife's loyalty so completely that you would hand her control voluntarily." He paused again.
"I don't know what that was.
But I thought you should know it exists."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"Thank you, Mr.
Fitch," I said.
"Send everything to Officer Calloway.
I'll give you her number."
I hung up and looked at Amy.
"She had a backup plan," I said.
Amy didn't look surprised.
She looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with the hour.
May you like
"I know," she said.
"I think I know what it was."
