"I heard," I told her. Monique lifted her glass and said they had been talking about a friend who was having trouble with her marriage. I looked at the bags and the folder and asked, "Does the friend have my American Express, too?" Erica's smile disappeared. "Not everything is about you," she snapped, which was interesting because the sentence I had overheard contained my actual name.
I did not search the folder or demand that they explain it. I asked Erica to talk to me after Monique left, and she said she had a dinner appointment she could not cancel. Monique departed with the expression of a woman who had just watched a useful conversation become inconvenient. Erica spent twenty minutes upstairs changing clothes, then told me not to wait up. I stood in the kitchen afterward and noticed that one of the empty glasses had left a ring of condensation on a household budget I had prepared the week before and Erica had refused to discuss.
That night she came home after midnight and went directly to bed. I lay beside her for a long time, listening to the ceiling fan and thinking about the distance between the woman I had married and the one who regarded me as an obstacle to an exit strategy. I did not yet know whether she intended to leave, whether she was having an affair, or whether Monique had simply given her a language for a dissatisfaction she could not articulate honestly. I knew only that I could no longer make good decisions by pretending I had not heard what I had heard. At six the next morning I made coffee, took the mug out onto the deck, and called Peter Nolan.
Peter listened without interrupting. He had a way of letting people finish a bad explanation, perhaps because his profession involved discovering which facts remained once the bad explanations were removed. When I was done, he asked whether Erica had access to Harborline's operating funds, company vehicles, or property documents. I explained the supplementary card, the monthly transfers to her consulting account, and the Tahoe she had been driving for the past two years.
"Do not do anything dramatic," Peter told me. "Do not empty joint accounts, hide records, change ownership, or cut off essential support to punish her. You need a complete picture before you need a confrontation." I said I understood, although there was a part of me that wanted to drive home, throw open every cupboard, and demand an answer before the coffee cooled.
He continued, "North Carolina has its own timing and rules for separation and divorce, and owning a company before marriage does not magically answer every property question. We handle what is separate, what was built during the marriage, and what either of you may properly claim. Clean hands, Mark. Always clean hands."