Marilyn had moved to Charleston years earlier and told everyone she ran an independent consulting practice.

Dennis described her as hopeless with money.

I had sent her birthday checks because he said she needed help with rent.

Now her signature sat beside payments totaling more than four million dollars.

I wrote her name in the margin of my notebook.

Then I crossed out the sentence I’d been telling myself for years: Gary did it all.

Maybe he hadn’t.

PART 6