Chapter 3 - FactsVivienne never promised that divorce would be quick, clean, or fair. She promised something better. "Facts," she said, tapping her legal pad. "We build this on facts."
Her office overlooked downtown Pittsburgh beneath a steel-gray late-winter sky. Sadie was eleven days old and asleep in a carrier beside my chair. I hadn't slept more than two consecutive hours in over a week, yet I remembered every word Vivienne said. Because for years, Preston had trained me to doubt my memory — denied things I'd clearly heard, called me dramatic, oversensitive, forgetful. If I showed him a text, he said I'd misunderstood the tone. If I repeated his exact words, he laughed and asked whether pregnancy had damaged my brain.
Vivienne didn't care about tone. She cared about records.
We started with the bank statements. The transfers totaled $43,700 over fourteen months. Some went into an account I never knew existed. Others went to a brokerage account in Preston's name.
Vivienne told me not to assume the money was gone. "Marital assets do not become separate property just because one spouse hides them," she said.
She also told me to change every password I controlled, obtain copies of tax returns, preserve Preston's messages, and write down the dates of major incidents while my memory was fresh.
For three days, I did exactly that. Preston kept calling. When I didn't answer, he switched tactics again. He sent flowers to Genevieve's house. The card read: Come home. Sadie needs both parents. No apology. No mention of the fifteen dollars. No acknowledgment that he'd left his full-term wife in active labor because a client dinner mattered more. Just an instruction disguised as concern.
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I photographed the card and sent it to Vivienne.
Then Preston called my mother. That hurt more.
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