I needed information before I made any move.
Sandra agreed.
She also said, gently but directly, that I needed to speak to a lawyer before I said a single word to Colin.
Not because she was assuming the worst, but because she had seen enough situations like this to know that the person who moves first without information is almost always the person who ends up with less.
I didn’t sleep that night.
But by morning, I knew what my next steps were.
Two days later, I sat across from a family law attorney named Patricia Weston in a quiet office in downtown Phoenix.
Patricia was 52 years old, sharpeyed, and had the particular calm of someone who has heard every version of every story and is no longer surprised by any of them, but who has also never stopped caring about the person sitting across from her.
I told her everything.
She listened without interrupting.
When I finished, she asked several specific questions about our joint finances, about the house deed, about Colin’s income and accounts that I had access to.
I answered what I could.
Some things I didn’t know.
“That’s okay,” Patricia said. “That’s what we find out.”
She advised me to begin gathering whatever financial documents I had access to: statements, tax returns, anything I could photograph or copy without moving or removing.
She told me not to change my behavior at home, to act as normally as possible.
“Right now,” she said, “the most important thing you can do is not let him know you know. Not yet. Not until we understand the full picture.”
I drove home and did exactly that.
For 3 weeks, I lived inside that house with Colin and Dylan and carried what I knew like something heavy in the center of my chest that I could not put down.
Colin, for his part, behaved as though nothing had happened.
That was its own kind of answer.
He did not come to me, did not confess, did not show any sign of guilt or remorse or even discomfort.
He came home from work, ate dinner with us, helped Dylan with his reading, watched television, went to sleep.
That calm, that complete and absolute absence of conscience, told me more about who Colin actually was than anything else could have.
I gathered what Patricia had asked for.
Quietly, carefully, I photographed documents when Colin was out. I went through joint accounts and noted everything I found.
Nothing unusual emerged financially.
This was not a situation of hidden money or secret accounts.
Colin had not been stealing from me.
What he had been stealing was something that has no dollar value and cannot be recovered.
Natalie called me twice during those three weeks.
I let both calls go to voicemail.
Her messages were short, shaking.
She said she was sorry. She said she didn’t know how to explain. She said she loved me and she needed me to call her back.