The cruelty I could have survived.

What I could not survive was that my wife had read every word of it and answered with a laughing emoji.

And tangled in with all of it, something far worse than cruelty.

Mildred was the treasurer of a registered charity in Alton’s name, one meant to fund medical supplies for low-income children’s clinics.

My forensic accountant, pulling unrelated records, had found the irregularities: personal purchases logged as operations, Roxanne’s vacations booked as outreach, cash moving into an account tied to Grover — and Lindsay’s fingerprints on the cover-up, marking doctored transfers as verified so Alton would never see.

Over four million dollars, gone from a fund for sick children.