Unit 4B was at the very end of the hall. The door was painted a peeling dark green.

I stood there for a long time, just listening. What if someone was inside? What if my husband was in there with another woman?

I thought about turning around. Part of me wanted to run back to my quiet ranch house and pretend I never found the key.

But I didn’t. I slid the brass key into the lock. It turned with a heavy click.

I pushed the door open. The apartment was tiny. It was a basic studio with a single window overlooking an alley. There was no bed. No couch. No television.

There was only a cheap metal desk, a single folding chair, and an old Asus laptop.

But it was the walls that made me sick to my stomach.

Every square inch of the drywall was covered in paper. Hundreds of pages were taped to the walls in neat, overlapping rows.

I took a step closer, my eyes straining in the dim light. I saw my own name. Highlighted in bright yellow ink on every single page.

There were bank statements dating back 4 years. Every purchase I had made at Meijer, every coffee I had bought, every shoe purchase for Lily. All of it was printed out with notes written in the margins in Mark’s neat, blocky handwriting.

Beside the bank statements were my phone records. Every text message I had sent to my sister, Sarah. Every call to my mother. Every email to Lily’s school.

He had been investigating me. For 4 years.

I saw printouts of my GPS logs. He had installed a tracker on my Chevy. I could see the map lines showing my daily drive to the dental clinic, my weekly trips to the grocery store, and the times I had visited my sister.

I walked slowly around the room, touching the cold paper on the walls. It felt like being trapped in a spiderweb. Every detail of my mundane, quiet life had been cataloged, studied, and filed.

There was a thick manila folder resting on the desk. I opened it. It was a private investigator’s report. There were photographs of me loading groceries into my car, sitting in the park with Lily, and walking our dog.

And then there were my medical records. Pages and pages of them. He had obtained records from my back surgery 5 years ago, including the prescriptions for pain medication I had taken during my recovery.

Underneath one of the medical pages, Mark had written: Potential substance abuse argument for custody.

I read those words, and I felt a physical pain in my chest. I had taken those pills for exactly 2 weeks, under a doctor’s strict supervision. I had never abused anything in my life.

He was building a case. A case for divorce. A case to take Lily away from me. He wanted our daughter, and he wanted our house, which had been paid off using the small inheritance my grandmother left me.

I had never done anything wrong. I had been a faithful, loving wife. I had clipped coupons, cleaned the house, worked 40 hours a week, and supported his career.

I walked over to the desk. The laptop was sitting there, plugged into the wall. It was unlocked. The screen was glowing in the dark room.

I clicked on the open document. It was a draft of a letter to his lawyer, a man named Douglas Vance.

I began to read, and my hands started to tremble so violently I had to grip the edge of the desk to keep from falling.

She doesn’t know about the life insurance policy I took out on her, the letter read. She also doesn’t know about the bank account in Ohio. I have successfully moved $86,400 into that account over the last 4 years. She believes we are living paycheck to paycheck.

I stared at the screen. $86,400. That was our savings. That was the money we were supposed to be putting away for Lily’s college fund. He had been stealing from us, month by month, while telling me we couldn’t afford to fix the leaky faucet in the bathroom.