I read that sentence several times. It was the voice I knew. Nolan rarely shouted when he wanted control. He spoke as though he were protecting people from consequences they had created themselves.
Daniel asked what I remembered about the year we married. I told him Nolan had said his first wife left after an unhappy separation, that they had been legally divorced, that she had moved abroad. He showed me a certified marriage record and a later dissolution judgment. The dates were real, but Mara had never appeared at the final hearing. She had been represented by an attorney whose file was now being reviewed.
“So he used the disappearance to build a clean biography,” I whispered.
“Perhaps,” Daniel said. “We need documents, not assumptions.”
I appreciated his caution even when it hurt. My trial had shown what happens when assumptions harden into facts. I would not build a second injustice merely because the target deserved suspicion.
