Chapter 4 - THE FIRST THING ABIGAIL TOOK BACK
Robert refused to explain further over the phone.
Nathan told Abigail not to chase him.
“Let investigators interview him properly.”
Abigail hated that answer because it was correct.
So she focused on what she could control.
First, she revoked Derek’s access to the joint emergency savings account after confirming with the bank what she could legally restrict without touching funds that remained jointly owned.
Then she redirected her salary to an individual account.
She froze her own credit file.
She notified the home-equity lender in writing that she disputed any authorization attributed to her.
Nathan began preparing for a protection order.
The decisions frightened Abigail.
Not because she regretted them.
Because seven years of marriage were being converted into passwords, statements, and instructions to strangers.
Derek had always handled the mortgage autopay.
Abigail handled insurance.
He scheduled vacations.
She managed medical coverage.
Their lives were woven through practical routines that assumed neither person would deliberately hurt the other.
Now every routine had to be examined.
The bank found something almost immediately.
Two months earlier, Derek had changed the mailing preference on their mortgage account from paper-and-electronic to electronic only.
He told Abigail at the time it was “less clutter.”
She had forgotten.
The lender also produced a preliminary home-equity file containing a consent page with Abigail’s digital signature attached.
The metadata showed the file originated from a home computer.
Not Abigail’s laptop.
Derek’s desktop.
Nathan cautioned her.
“That does not tell us who physically attached the image.”
“It tells us where.”
“Yes.”
Her credit report showed an inquiry from the lender nearly three weeks before Derek first discussed the loan with her.
Another contradiction.
He had not approached her with an idea.
He had approached her after beginning it.
That afternoon hospital staff informed Abigail that Derek was no longer permitted to visit because she requested it.
Evelyn called the nurses’ station twice.
The second time, security documented the call.
Robert did not call again.
Abigail spent her third night alone for the first time since the injury.
She cried after midnight.
Not from the cast.
From remembering the stupid tenderness of her marriage.
Derek warming her car before early shifts.
The way he always bought the cereal she liked even though he hated it.
Seven anniversaries.
Six Christmas mornings.
A thousand ordinary kindnesses that could not be reconciled easily with a man standing over her broken leg telling his mother to let her learn.
At 1:18 a.m., Nathan emailed.
Detectives had completed the first search.
They recovered the expected loan documents.
They also found a second folder in a locked desk drawer.
It contained apartment listings in downtown Cincinnati.
A divorce attorney’s retainer agreement.
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And a handwritten budget titled:
AFTER ABBY.
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