In the months that followed, prosecutors assembled a case against her so complete that her own attorney reportedly begged her to take a plea: the cloud video, the forensic bank ledgers, the forged transfer authorization, and the sworn testimony of the very home-care aide Wendy had dismissed, who turned out to have kept notes of her own about why she had left.

Chapter 19 — What Goes Back

The divorce was finalized long before the criminal trial ever began, and it was, in the end, an anticlimax, because there was so little left to argue about.

Wendy walked away with her pre-marital personal belongings and a small, lawful fraction of the genuine marital assets — far, far less than the fortune she had spent six years planning to strip from me, but her legal due, and I did not begrudge it, because I am not interested in taking what is not mine.

That was always the difference between us.

My mother’s stolen retirement funds, however, were recovered in full — clawed back out of the frozen shell accounts, and made up in the remainder through the forced liquidation of the luxury goods Wendy had bought with them.