My role was simple.
Leave the house under a normal pretext.
Don’t warn her.
Don’t confront her.
Don’t let your emotions get the better of you and don’t become stupid.
I kissed her goodbye and told her I had a round of golf early in the morning.
She was half under the covers, her hair on the pillow, her face soft with sleep.
For a second, grief hit me so hard that I almost sat back down.
Then I remembered: mourning for what?
For a woman who never existed?
Did she play the game well enough for the wedding to deceive me?
I left.
I sat in a safe place with Reynolds and waited.
When the call came in, it was almost clinical.
Sarah was taken away without incident.
Seven other arrests took place in the region.
Computers, cash, telephones, ledgers, hard drives, bank statements seized.
Millions of accounts reported or frozen.
The network was not dead, but it was split.
I returned home that afternoon to a house that was exactly the same and yet seemed completely fake.
The sofa. The kitchen. The wedding photo in the hallway. Her blanket on the chair.
This is what such a betrayal provokes. It doesn’t just eliminate the liar, it poisons the atmosphere.
The divorce took months. Criminal investigation. Asset search. The government sorted through assets, separating personal property from unpaid debts.
I was exonerated. They proved that I knew nothing.
That should have seemed noble.
It was pathetic.
Sarah pleaded guilty. Twelve years in federal prison.
She refused to cooperate against some of her superiors. Loyalty to criminals. None to me.
I’ve never been there.
I have never written.
At that moment, I understood that any explanation she might give would only be another form of self-protection.
I had already lived too long inside those places.
I am often asked if I miss her.
They talk about Sarah who massaged my shoulders when I had migraines, who remembered my sister’s birthday, who fell asleep with her hand on my chest, who talked about future holidays, paint colors and retirement.
I don’t know what to do with this question.
