“He cleaned us out,” I breathed, the air leaving my lungs.
“He took everything,” Mia hissed, scrolling through the transactions. “Look at this. He’s been transferring money out for months. Small amounts so you wouldn’t notice, then a massive withdrawal this morning.”
My phone buzzed on the coffee table. A text from Mitchell.
Don’t make this harder than it has to be. The lawyer will contact you about the divorce. The house is in my name, so you need to be out by Friday.
Three days. He was giving me three days to vacate the life I had built.
The baby isn’t yours? I typed back, my fingers shaking so hard I could barely hit the keys. We both know you were seeing someone else last Christmas. Stop playing games.
I stared at the message until the words blurred into gray blobs. Last Christmas, he had been obsessed with accusing me of flirting with Jake, my study partner from my online accounting class. Jake, who was gay and married to his husband of ten years. Mitchell knew that. He’d shaken Jake’s hand. This wasn’t about paternity. This was about wanting out, and needing a narrative that made him the victim and me the villain.
He’s lying, I whispered to the empty room. He knows he’s lying.
But as I looked at the empty bank account and the boxes of my life stacked by the door, I realized the truth didn’t matter yet. The story was already out there, spreading through our small town like wildfire. By morning, I’d lost my husband, my home, my extended family, and my reputation.
But the real blow came an hour later, when I tried to log into the mortgage portal to prove my name was on the deed. The password had been changed. And when I checked the county clerk’s website, my heart stopped. A quitclaim deed, dated six months ago. A signature that looked exactly like mine, signing away my rights to the property.
I hadn’t signed that.
