For the first time since I’d seen the hotel charges, the ground under me felt like it might hold.
Over the next eight weeks, I built my exit in pieces so small they looked harmless if you didn’t know what you were looking at.
I opened a personal checking account at a different bank using my maiden name. I started moving money in careful, forgettable amounts, never enough to trigger questions, always enough to matter later. I rented a third-floor apartment near the Saugatuck River with east-facing windows and a second bedroom already painted pale cream. I signed the lease with a pen that shook only once.
Then I started moving parts of myself there.
Not the obvious things first. Not clothes or baby furniture. I moved the pieces Nathan would never notice were gone because he had never truly seen them.
My framed CPA certificate. The photo of me speaking at a financial fraud conference in Boston. Research notebooks from my old cases. A box of tax law binders I had kept in the study closet. The navy blazer I used to wear on depositions. Every trip felt less like packing and more like excavation.