“Are you still there, Mrs. Miller?” Clara asked.

“I’m here,” I whispered.

“We have already flagged this with our legal team and the insurance fraud division. But because the payout was sent to an account with your husband’s name on it as a joint spouse, we needed to verify if you had authorized this. We are sending you the copies of the forged documents now.”

I clicked back over to David. He was still sniffling on the line.

“Sarah? Are you there? Please tell me you’ll help.”

“I’ll be over in twenty minutes, David,” I said. My voice was very calm.

I got in my old Chevy, the passenger door rusted at the bottom. I grabbed my blue spiral notebook from the table. I drove downtown to his cheap, cluttered apartment. Chloe had cleaned him out when she left, just like he had cleaned me out. When he opened the door, he looked awful. He had lost weight, his face was gaunt, and he was wearing a dirty t-shirt. He looked like a ghost of the man who had walked out on me.

“Oh, thank God,” he whispered, reaching out to hug me.

I stepped back. I didn’t let him touch me. I walked into his living room. It was messy. Pizza boxes on the floor, a cheap TV on a cardboard box. I laid the blue spiral notebook on his kitchen counter. Right next to it, I laid the printed PDF sheets the clinic had just emailed me. The ones with his forged signature. The ones with Chloe’s notary stamp.

David stared at the papers. His eyes darted from the signature to me. The color completely drained from his face. He actually stumbled back against the counter, his mouth open.

“What… what is this?” he stammered.

“That’s my $250,000, David,” I said. I didn’t scream. My voice was as cold as ice. “That’s the money you stole while I was losing my hair.

That’s the money you used to buy Chloe’s Jeep and rent that fancy apartment.”

“Sarah, I can explain…”

“There’s nothing to explain,” I said.

Just then, there was a knock at the door. I had called the Grand Rapids police department from my car. Two officers were standing in the hallway.