Chapter 1 - The Digital Trail
I didn't close the browser tab. Instead, sitting in the blue light of my laptop while Derek slept down the hall, I pulled the shared phone records for the last six months.
It wasn't a sudden, passionate affair. It was a calculated, secondary life. The call logs revealed a rhythm as predictable as the ticking sprinkler outside our window. A ten-minute call every morning at 7:30 AM on his drive to the office. A forty-five-minute call every Tuesday evening when he supposedly had "site inspections" in EaDo. Hundreds of text messages exchanged during the hours he was sitting on the couch next to me, staring at his screen and claiming he was answering emails from investors.
But phone records only proved contact. I needed more.
I logged into our joint credit card accounts, the ones he thought I ignored because I had always trusted him to handle the day-to-day corporate expenses. It took me less than an hour to find the discrepancies. They were hidden under vague expense categories for Ashford & Marsh—"Client Entertainment" and "Out-of-Town Vendor Lodging." But when I cross-referenced the dates with the text spikes on his phone bill, the truth materialized in undeniable, agonizing clarity.
The St. Regis. The Post Oak Hotel. A luxury boutique resort in Austin during a weekend he claimed he was at a real estate seminar.
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I sat back in my chair, resting my hands on my swelling belly. The baby kicked, a sharp, physical reminder of the life we were supposed to be building, while the man I married was busy tearing it down. I didn't cry. The tears had frozen somewhere behind my eyes, replaced by a cold, absolute clarity. Derek thought he had married a passive, comfortable wife who would look the other way to keep her beautiful River Oaks house standing.
He had forgotten who actually paid for the foundation.
