Chapter 6: Fourteen Days of Pretending
The first week was the hardest thing I have ever done.
I went to work.
I came home.
I made conversation about nothing.
I watched Laura move through our house — our kitchen, our living room, the bedroom we had shared for six years — and I kept my face neutral and my voice easy and I did not let a single thing show.
Cole had given me a small secondary phone, prepaid, kept in my car.
Every evening I would stop at the gas station two blocks from the house, pretend to fill up, and call him from the parking lot.
"Anything unusual today?" he would ask.
Most nights: no.
On the fourth night: "She made a call from the back porch after dinner.
Kept her voice low.
Went back inside when she saw me come to the window."
"Duration?"
"Four minutes."
"We'll check it."
On the seventh night I came home to find her going through the filing cabinet in the spare room.
She looked up when I walked in, and for one half-second something crossed her face — not guilt exactly, but the rapid calculation of someone who has been caught mid-motion and is deciding how to frame it.
"Looking for the car insurance documents," she said.
"I thought I filed them in here."
"They're in the blue folder on the desk," I said.
"Always have been."
"Of course." She smiled.
"I don't know where my head is lately."
She moved past me into the hallway.
I stood in the doorway of the spare room and looked at the filing cabinet.
The drawer she had been in held bank statements.
Three years of them.
I called Cole from the gas station that night.
"She was in the financial records," I said.
A pause.
"Did anything look disturbed?"
"I don't know what she was looking for.
But she wasn't looking for car insurance."
"Michael, listen to me.
We're at day seven.
Farrow has made contact twice in the last week — we've confirmed that.
We think something is moving.
Can you hold on?"
"Yes."
"If anything feels unsafe—"
"I'll call."
I drove home.
Laura was on the sofa watching television.
She patted the cushion beside her without looking up.
I sat down.
She leaned against my shoulder.
On the screen, someone was laughing.
Day ten, she asked me about the joint savings account.
We were washing dishes together after dinner — she washed, I dried, the way we had always done it — and she said it so casually that I almost missed the weight of it.
"I was thinking we should move some of the savings into a higher-yield account.
I read about one with a good rate."
I kept drying.
"Which account?"
"The joint one.
The larger one."
I set the dish down.
"How much were you thinking?"
"Most of it, really.
The rate difference is significant over time."
I looked at her.
She was still focused on the sink, scrubbing a pan.
"Send me the details," I said.
"I'll take a look."
"I can just handle it if you want.
I know you're busy."
"Send me the details," I said again, quietly.
"I'd like to see it first."
She handed me the pan to dry.
"Of course."
That night I called Cole and told him what she had said.
His answer was immediate.
"She's moving the money.
Farrow is accelerating the timeline.
Michael, we need to talk about moving sooner than two weeks."
"How soon?"
"Possibly three days."
"What do I do until then?"
"Stall the account.
Tell her you want to consult your financial advisor first.
Buy us seventy-two hours."
I agreed.
I went back inside.
Laura was already in bed, reading.
She looked up when I came in and smiled.
"Everything okay?" she asked.
The same question I had asked her on the drive back from Millbrook, two weeks ago, on the day a state trooper had pressed a folded note into my hand.
May you like
"Fine," I said.
The same word she had given me.
