Chapter 3 - The Groom Who Went Looking for My Signature
We didn’t go home.
That was Jenna’s decision.
At first, I argued.
“My purse is there. Emma’s clothes are there. Everything is there.”
“And Matthew has a key.”
The sentence ended the discussion.
Jenna drove us to her older brother’s house twenty minutes outside the city. He and his wife were away visiting family, and Jenna still had the security code from feeding their cat the previous month.
My mother followed in her car.
By the time we arrived, I had received thirty-two calls.
Twenty-seven from Matthew.
Three from his sister.
Two from numbers I didn’t recognize.
I blocked none of them.
I answered none of them.
I wanted everything saved.
Some instinct had taken over.
Maybe maternal instinct.
Maybe fear.
Maybe both.
The minute we entered the house, Emma asked if she could change out of her flower-girl dress.
Jenna found an oversized T-shirt in the laundry room.
My mother helped Emma remove her flower crown.
Tiny white blossoms fell onto the floor.
Watching them scatter almost made me cry.
That morning, I had believed those flowers were part of the happiest day of my life.
Now they looked like evidence from a life I had barely escaped.
I changed into Jenna’s brother’s sweatpants and an old college hoodie.
My wedding dress remained in a heap across the guest-room bed.
I couldn’t look at it.
Emma sat on the couch clutching Bunny.
The seam beneath his neck was still open.
“Can you fix him?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes, baby.”
I would have promised her anything.
My mother made grilled cheese nobody ate.
Jenna put the recorder on the kitchen table.
“Before we touch this, should we call the police?”
I stared at it.
“Is recording someone illegal?”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
She looked toward the living room.
“If he’s threatening Emma, I think someone needs to know.”
My mother nodded.
“I agree.”
I didn’t.
Not yet.
Not because I wanted to protect Matthew.
That instinct was dead.
But because I needed to understand.
I needed to know what I was accusing him of.
And most importantly, I needed Emma to feel like I was listening now.
Completely.
I sat beside her.
“Sweetheart?”
She looked up.
“I need to ask you some questions.”
Her arms tightened around Bunny.
“Am I in trouble?”
The words hurt more than I expected.
“No.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
I held out my pinkie.
Emma linked hers around mine.
“You will never be in trouble for telling me when someone makes you scared.”
She nodded.
“Even if it’s somebody Mommy loves.”
Another nod.
“Even if they tell you I’ll be mad.”
Emma’s eyes became wet.
“Matthew said you’d pick him.”
I swallowed.
“I picked wrong when I didn’t listen enough before.”
She stared at me.
“But I’m picking you now.”
Emma leaned into me.
I kissed her hair.
“Did Matthew ever hurt you?”
“No.”
“Did he touch you anywhere he shouldn’t?”
“No.”
Relief washed through me again.
“What did he do?”
“He yelled.”
“When?”
“When you weren’t there.”
“About what?”
“Stuff.”
“What stuff?”
She thought about it.
“If I left toys downstairs.”
“What else?”
“If I asked when he was leaving.”
“What else?”
“If I said I didn’t want him to live with us.”
My jaw tightened.
“What would he say?”
Emma looked down.
“He said little kids don’t make grown-up decisions.”
That, by itself, wasn’t outrageous.
It was the next sentence that changed everything.
“He said when he married you, you’d stop asking me what I wanted.”
My mother inhaled sharply.
I kept my eyes on Emma.
“What else?”
“He said my room might be downstairs.”
“What?”
“He said upstairs bedrooms were for you and him.”
We didn’t have a downstairs bedroom.
We had a partially finished basement.
My skin went cold.
“Did he say where you would sleep?”
“In the room by the washing machine.”
My mother stood.
“No.”
Her voice shook.
“No. Absolutely not.”
Emma startled.
I raised a hand.
“Mom, please.”
She walked away, covering her mouth.
I turned back.
“Did Matthew ever tell you not to tell me?”
“All the time.”
“How?”
“He said tattling makes people stop loving you.”
There it was.
Not one cruel remark.
A pattern.
A system.
Small enough to explain away individually.
Ugly when placed together.
The recorder sat twenty feet away.
Waiting.
My phone rang again.
This time it was Matthew’s mother, Diane.
I almost ignored it.
Then answered.
“Sarah?”
Her voice was frantic.
“Where are you?”
“Safe.”
“What happened?”
“Ask your son.”
“I have! He says Emma had some kind of episode and you panicked.”
I closed my eyes.
Of course.
“What kind of episode?”
“He said she became hysterical about the wedding.”
Emma was sitting three feet away quietly coloring in a notebook Jenna had given her.
“She wasn’t hysterical.”
“Then what happened?”
“I found a recording device hidden inside her stuffed animal.”
Silence.
Long enough to matter.
“Diane?”
“I’m here.”
“Did you know?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
“Did you know?”
“No, Sarah.”
“But you knew something.”
Another silence.
Then Diane whispered, “Matthew has always needed control.”
My blood chilled.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“He had problems after his first engagement.”
I stood.
“What first engagement?”
Diane immediately tried to retreat.
“It was years ago.”
“He told me he’d never been engaged.”
“Sarah—”
“What happened?”
“They broke up.”
“Why?”
“I really don’t think now is the time.”
“Your son put a recorder in my five-year-old daughter’s stuffed rabbit. Now is exactly the time.”
Diane started crying.
That terrified me more than if she had defended him.
“He checked her phone,” she finally said.
“Whose phone?”
“Lauren’s.”
“His former fiancée?”
“Yes.”
“Checked it how?”
“He installed something.”
I sat down slowly.
“Something?”
“He said he thought she was cheating.”
“Was she?”
“No.”
“What else did he do?”
“I don’t know everything.”
“You knew enough to hide this from me.”
“I thought he changed.”
The oldest excuse in the world.
I ended the call.
Jenna was already searching Matthew’s name online.
“There’s no criminal record.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“I know.”
My mother looked at the recorder.
“Play it.”
I hesitated.
Then Emma spoke.
“You should.”
All three adults turned toward her.
She kept coloring.
“He says stuff when you’re gone.”
I walked to the kitchen table.
The recorder was small and inexpensive.
There was one button on the side.
I pressed it.
Nothing.
Jenna found a charging cable in the office.
We connected it to a laptop.
A folder opened.
Twenty-three audio files.
Twenty-three.
The oldest was dated almost four months earlier.
My heart stopped.
“That’s before yesterday.”
Jenna nodded.
“He’s done this before.”
Apparently Matthew hadn’t simply placed the recorder in Bunny.
He had been removing it.
Downloading it.
Putting it back.
Again and again.
I clicked the first file.
Static.
Then my own voice.
“Emma, shoes please! We’re late.”
Normal life.
Another file.
Me reading a bedtime story.
Another.
Emma talking to Bunny.
Then we opened one recorded during an afternoon I recognized.
I had been at work.
Matthew had volunteered to wait at my house for a delivery.
I hadn’t known Emma’s preschool closed early for teacher training until that morning.
My neighbor brought her home.
Matthew had been with Emma for forty-three minutes before I arrived.
I had forgotten about that.
The recording began with Emma singing.
Then Matthew’s voice.
Not the warm voice I knew.
Cold.
“Stop that.”
Silence.
“I said stop.”
Emma whispered, “I’m playing.”
“You’re annoying me.”
My hands began shaking.
On the recording, Emma said, “Mommy lets me sing.”
Then Matthew laughed once.
“Your mommy lets you do too much.”
Jenna grabbed my wrist.
I couldn’t move.
Matthew continued.
“You understand things are changing soon, right?”
“No.”
“When your mom and I get married, I’m going to be your dad.”
“You’re not my daddy.”
A chair scraped.
Matthew’s voice became quieter.
That somehow made it worse.
“Listen to me carefully. You don’t decide what happens in this house.”
Emma began crying.
Not loudly.
The small, breathless crying of a child trying not to be noticed.
“I want Mommy.”
“You always want Mommy.”
“I want her now.”
“Well, she isn’t here.”
Then came words I would remember for the rest of my life.
“And if you keep trying to make her choose between us, eventually she’s going to get tired of choosing you.”
I covered my mouth.
My mother left the room crying.
Jenna stopped the recording.
“No.”
I stared at the screen.
“Play the rest.”
“Sarah—”
“Play it.”
She did.
Matthew spent almost fifteen minutes telling my daughter what life would look like after our wedding.
He said I wouldn’t have time to “baby” her anymore.
He told her she would attend a different school because he had already researched one with longer hours.
He said Bunny would eventually have to disappear because “big girls don’t carry dirty animals.”
And then he said something I hadn’t known anything about.
“Once the house paperwork is finished, everything will be easier.”
Emma sniffled.
“What house?”
“The one you live in.”
“Mommy’s house?”
“Not for long.”
My eyes locked on Jenna’s.
The house belonged to me.
I had bought it four years before meeting Matthew.
There was no house paperwork.
At least none I had authorized.
We stopped the recording.
My mother returned.
“What does he mean?”
“I don’t know.”
Then my phone buzzed.
A new message.
Not Matthew.
My bank.
Security alert: We detected an unsuccessful attempt to access your home-equity account.
I stared at the screen.
The attempt had occurred eighteen minutes earlier.
While Matthew knew I was away from home.
Jenna read it over my shoulder.
“Oh my God.”
I called the bank immediately.
The representative verified my identity.
Then she told me somebody had attempted to access an application started in my name three weeks earlier.
“What application?”
There was a pause.
“A home-equity line of credit.”
“For how much?”
“Two hundred forty thousand dollars.”
The room disappeared around me.
“I never applied for that.”
The representative’s voice changed instantly.
She transferred me to fraud prevention.
As I waited, another notification appeared.
My front-door camera.
Motion detected.
I opened the live feed.
Matthew was standing on my porch.
Still wearing his wedding tuxedo.
He looked directly into the camera.
Then he held up his key.
He entered my house.
Jenna whispered, “Call the police.”
This time I didn’t hesitate.
I dialed 911.
But before the dispatcher answered, another camera alert appeared.
Living room.
Matthew walked straight past the furniture.
Straight past the wedding gifts.
Straight past everything else.
He headed toward my home office.
And suddenly I knew.
He wasn’t there because he was heartbroken.
He wasn’t there because his bride had run away.
May you like
He was there because there was something inside my house he needed to get before I discovered it.
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