In the bathroom’s thin yellow light, the note’s message wouldn’t change no matter how many times I read it, and by the time I dialed the detective’s number the next morning, I already knew—on some animal level—that my life had split into a before and an after on the shoulder of Route 35. Reynolds’s voice made that division official. Meridian didn’t exist. Sarah’s job was theater. Our marriage was cover. As he walked me through the shell companies and offshore accounts tied to her name, I kept seeing stupidly ordinary images: her folding laundry, humming; her asleep on the couch with a book on her chest; her laughing with my mother over Thanksgiving dishes. Each memory developed a second exposure beneath it, darker and more precise. When he asked if I would help them, I realized I already had, simply by listening. Agreeing to wear a wire in my own kitchen felt less like betrayal and more like finally stepping into the same sto… Continues…
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