Chapter 6: The Retainer

Martha's POV

The lawyer listened to the whole of the nearly twelve minutes with her eyes closed.

She was a lean woman in her fifties with reading glasses on a chain.

She took the call from her office in Dayton, on my laptop screen, at ten on Monday morning.

I sat in the nursery with the door shut and one earbud in.

My husband was asleep down the hall, after his shift, and the baby was down for her nap.

When the recording ended, the lawyer opened her eyes.

"Well," she said. "He is not being subtle."

"No."

"You're sure it's your husband," the lawyer said.

"Yes."

"Mrs. Rowe, I have to ask. A whisper is a whisper."

"I've been married to that voice for five years," I said. "I'm sure."

She nodded slowly and wrote something down.

"Here's what you need to hear from me, so you don't get your hopes up wrong."

She tapped her pen. "In Ohio it doesn't matter much who cheated. Your house came to you from your grandmother, and it's yours either way."

"I know. That's why I'm not afraid."

"What this tape changes is how fast he signs."

She took off her glasses and let them hang.

"A man who knows you have this will sign almost anything, quickly, and without a lot of fuss. Particularly if his family hears it first."

"That's the idea," I said.

"Is it?"

"I'm going to play it at his mother's Sunday dinner," I said. "On the fifteenth. In front of all of them."

For the first time she smiled.

"That's not the legal strategy I would have picked."

"No."

"But it's an understandable one." She looked at me through the screen. "File on the sixteenth."

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