Second Wife

Chapter 13 — The Money

Craig had come home early to change for a “client dinner.”

Anna watched him from Beth’s hallway, her smile nailed to her face, while he kissed Beth on the cheek and ruffled their son’s hair and never once suspected that the two most important women in his life were standing in the same house, sharing the same secret, for the first time in twelve years.

“Ladies,” he’d said, waving, and driven off.

The door closed. The papers came back out. Neither woman laughed, but the look they exchanged said everything: he had no idea. None at all.

“Client dinner,” Beth said. “In Dayton, apparently.”

“Dayton,” Anna repeated, writing it in the red notebook. “I’ll check.”

That became their rhythm over the next two weeks. Anna documented Craig’s movements from her town; Beth documented his from hers. They texted constantly — short, coded messages that would look innocent to anyone scrolling past. *He’s in Dayton tonight.* *Dayton confirmed. He’s at a motel off Route 35.* *He told me Pittsburgh. Same motel.*

But the money was the real story, and the money was Beth’s territory.

“I need you to come with me,” Beth said on a Thursday morning, her voice tight over the phone. “To the bank. I found something, and I don’t want to be alone when I ask about it.”

They met in the parking lot of First National, a brick building Beth had banked at for a decade. Anna wore sunglasses. Beth wore the expression of a woman walking into a courtroom.

Inside, the teller smiled. “How can I help you today, Mrs. Marlow?”

“I’d like to see a full list of accounts under my name,” Beth said. “All of them.”

The teller typed. Frowned. Typed again.

“There’s your checking, your savings, the joint account with Mr. Cole, and—” the teller paused — “a business savings account opened eighteen months ago. Under your name as sole owner.”

Beth went very still. “I’ve never opened a business account.”

“According to our records, you did. In person, at our Riverside branch. There’s a signature card on file.”

“I’ve never been to the Riverside branch.”

The teller printed the signature card. Beth stared at it. Anna leaned in.

The signature said *Beth Marlow* in handwriting that was close — terribly close — but wrong. The loop on the B was too wide. The cross on the t was too low. It was a forgery, and not even a careful one.

“I want to see the transaction history,” Beth said, her voice barely steady.

The teller hesitated. “Mrs. Marlow, I should tell you — there are some unusual patterns here. Large deposits, always just under ten thousand dollars. Then wire transfers out, usually within forty-eight hours. To accounts I can’t see the details of.”

Anna’s stomach dropped. She’d watched enough crime shows to know what “just under ten thousand dollars” meant. That was the number. The line you stayed under to avoid the bank filing a report.

“How much has moved through it?” Beth whispered.

The teller looked at the screen. “In eighteen months? A little over four hundred thousand dollars.”

Beth gripped the counter. Anna put a hand on her back.

“Freeze it,” Beth said. “Flag it. Do whatever you have to do, but I want it on record, right now, that I did not open this account.”

The teller’s smile was gone. “I’ll need to get my manager.”

In the manager’s office, Beth told the clean version: a traveling husband, a forged signature, money moving through an account she’d never seen. The manager listened, took notes, and said the words that chilled Anna to the bone:

“Mrs. Marlow, I have to ask — do you know where your husband is right now?”

“At a client dinner,” Beth said. “In Dayton.”

“And do you have any reason to believe he might be engaged in illegal activity?”

Beth looked at Anna. Anna looked at Beth.

“We have reason to believe he’s been lying about a lot of things,” Anna said carefully. “This is the first thing we can prove.”

The manager froze the account and filed a fraud report. Beth signed three forms with shaking hands. When they walked out into the parking lot, the afternoon sun felt too bright, too normal for what had just happened.

Four hundred thousand dollars. In Beth’s name. Deposits structured to dodge reporting requirements. Wire transfers to invisible accounts.

“Anna,” Beth said, and her voice was small. “If the IRS comes, if the police come — that’s my name on that account. My signature. Forged, but it’s my name. What if no one believes me?”

Anna took her hand. “Then we make them believe you. We have the fraud report. We have the signature comparison. And Beth—” Anna squeezed — “we have each other. That’s the whole point of the plan. Nobody fights this alone.”

Beth nodded, but her eyes were glassy. “He put it in my name. He didn’t just cheat on me, Anna. He set me up. If this blows up, I’m the one holding the bag.”

They stood in the parking lot, two women with a fraud report and a frozen account and a husband who was supposedly at a client dinner in Dayton.

Anna’s phone buzzed. A text from Jenna:

**Mom. Dad’s home. He’s acting weird. He keeps asking if anyone’s called.**

Anna showed Beth the screen. Beth’s face went white.

“He knows,” Beth whispered. “The bank must have flagged something. He knows we were there.”

Anna typed back: **Don’t tell him anything. I’m on my way.**

She looked at Beth. “We need to move faster.”

Beth nodded slowly. “Then it’s time I tell you the other thing I found. The thing I didn’t put in the folder.”

“What thing?”

Beth reached into her purse and pulled out a business card. Plain white. A name, a number, a seal.

“Six months ago,” Beth said, “a man came to my door while Craig was gone. He said he was a federal agent. He said he’d been watching Craig for a year. He left this and told me to call when I was ready.”

Anna took the card. The name read: **Special Agent Daniel Reyes, Federal Bureau of Investigation.**

“Are you ready?” Anna asked.

Beth looked at the frozen bank account behind them, at the fraud report in her hand, at the four hundred thousand dollars with her forged name on it.

“I think,” Beth said, “I don’t have a choice anymore.”