The div*rce was fast, because it’s hard to contest much when your spouse has photographs of your f*rged refinance and a one-way ticket for two.
I kept the house. The f*rged signature that was meant to st*al it from me became the thing that sank him; a document you faked is a document that proves intent. The drained accounts came back, mostly, once the bank understood what had happened. Trent left with his carry-on and his first-class ticket and the long, expensive shadow of what he’d tried to do.
Bianca, I later learned, hadn’t fully known what she was stepping into either. She found out at Gate 14, same as me, just two gates over. I don’t wish her well, exactly, but I don’t spend energy on her. He was a professional liar. We were both just people he lied to.
My mother and I don’t talk about how close it was. We don’t have to. Some Sundays she just reaches over and squeezes my hand for no reason, and I squeeze back, and that’s the whole conversation. Two years of letting a man make me feel like my own mother was a nuisance — and she was the one standing between me and disappearing off the face of my own life.
