I continued searching.
Expensive restaurant bills.
A jewelry purchase.
Transfers to an account I didn’t recognize.
More hotel charges.
The further back I went, the worse it became.
I wrote down every suspicious transaction.
By the time I finished reviewing ten months of records, the total exceeded eleven thousand dollars.
Eleven thousand dollars.
Money from accounts we had built together.
Money I believed was being saved for our future.
I couldn’t prove what every charge represented, but the pattern was impossible to dismiss.
I saved copies of the statements and called my closest friend, Maya.
“Can you come over?”
She immediately noticed something was wrong.
“Lauren, what’s happened?”
“I found out Tucker is seeing someone else.”
There was a long silence.
Then she said, “I’m on my way.”
Maya arrived carrying soup and a bag of groceries.
I told her everything.
The forgotten folder.
The airport.
