You have three days to adjust to these rules, or building security walks you to the sidewalk.”

I turned, walked into my room, and threw the deadbolt.

Through the wall I could hear a remote hit the floor and Shirley sobbing as she dialed Everett’s number over and over. The line stayed dead.

She called him eleven times that night. I lay in the dark listening to it and thought she was a woman throwing a tantrum because her son wasn’t answering.

Chapter 6 — Dissolving the Lies

The next morning I put on a navy power suit and went to the offices of O’Brien & Associates. Gavin O’Brien, a sharp family-law attorney who owed my firm a few favors, opened the bank logs I slid across his desk and let out a heavy sigh.

“Stella, this is worse than a shopping spree,” he said. “Over the past eight months your husband has quietly moved ninety thousand dollars into an account belonging to a woman named Emma McDowell.”