My husband left me in the car while I was in labor so he could go fishing with his father, then two hours later he called me crying, and by then the choice he made had already written the rest of my life.

A personal project.

I called it: figuring out exactly how badly my husband had screwed me over.

Turns out I’m an excellent forensic accountant.

Who knew?

Medical billing experience transfers surprisingly well to investigating your own husband’s financial betrayal. Very versatile skill set. I should put it on my résumé.

Every lunch break, while my coworkers ate sandwiches and scrolled through social media, I sat in my car in the parking lot and went through our bank records. I’d requested two full years of statements from our joint account.

What I found made my stomach drop so hard I thought I might be sick.

The pattern was clear once I laid it all out.

Year one of our marriage: small amounts. $150 here, $200 there, $350 once. “Business expenses,” he’d said. “Just helping Dad with inventory.” I barely noticed at the time because the amounts were small and I trusted him.

That’s the thing about trust. It makes you blind to the obvious.

Year two: the amounts grew. $500 in March. $800 in May. $1,200 in August. I noticed, but I believed his excuses—cash-flow problems at the business, supply-chain issues, a temporary loan, he’d handle it.

The last six months before Lily was born, everything accelerated. $2,000 in October. $3,500 in December. $4,100 in February. Large transfers—always to Holloway Pipe and Fixture LLC—always without my knowledge or consent.

I added it all up three times because I couldn’t believe the number.

$67,340.

Sixty-seven thousand dollars gone over twenty-eight months from an account that had both our names on it.

Money that was supposed to be for our future, our daughter’s future, our life together.

And he’d just handed it over to his father without telling me, without asking—like I was an inconvenience to manage rather than a partner to consult.

I sat in my car and cried for about five minutes.

Then I wiped my face, drank some cold coffee, and got back to work.

Not my job work.

My investigation work.

Because I wasn’t done digging yet.

That boat receipt had been bothering me. $4,600 was a lot for a deposit. I wanted to know what it was buying. So the following Saturday—while Brent was, where else, at the lake with his father—I drove to Lakeside Marine and Recreation in Huntington.

Lily May was strapped into her car seat, babbling happily, completely unaware that her mother was about to do a little reconnaissance.

I walked into the showroom and pretended to be interested in buying a boat. A nice young salesman, very helpful, showed me all the options. I casually mentioned that a friend had recently ordered something—last name Holloway, maybe—and asked what model he’d gotten.

The salesman lit up.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I remember that order. Great choice. Let me pull up the details.”

Two minutes later, I was looking at the paperwork for a 2024 Tracker Pro Team 195TXW, fully loaded.