I didn’t trust the lock.
I didn’t trust the walls.
I didn’t even trust the phone sitting beside my bed.
At two in the morning, I heard footsteps outside my door.
They stopped.
A shadow appeared beneath the gap.
Then Mark’s voice came through the wood.
“Emily?
Are you awake?”
I held my breath.
The shadow remained for nearly a minute.
Finally, the footsteps moved away.
At dawn, I left through the back door while Mark was in the shower.
I carried one overnight bag, my identification, our marriage certificate, several bank statements, and the lottery ticket.
I drove to a bank where we had never held an account and rented a safe-deposit box.
Then I went to see a lawyer.
Her name was Miriam Shaw.
She was sixty-one, with silver hair, intelligent gray eyes, and an office overlooking the courthouse square.
I had found her through a former coworker whose divorce had involved a complicated business dispute.
