That was his most expensive mistake.
The forensic accountant Robert hired was a woman named Dr. Susan Pratt, and she was, in Karen’s admiring words, a bloodhound in a blazer.
She had testified in forty-seven divorce cases and, according to her own CV, had never once failed to locate assets that were being obscured.
I met her once, briefly, in Robert’s conference room. She had the polite, focused manner of someone who finds dishonesty deeply offensive on a professional level.
I liked her immediately.
Dr. Pratt worked for three weeks. Gerald and his attorney, Douglas Whitmore, were legally required to cooperate with her requests.
They did so, but with the calculated slowness of people who believe that delay is a strategy.
Documents arrived in pieces. Deadlines were met at the last possible hour. Whitmore sent Robert two letters complaining that the scope of inquiry was harassing and disproportionate.
Robert responded to each letter with a single polite paragraph and continued exactly as before.
I watched all of this from the house in Westport, which Gerald had moved out of in early July. He was living with Renee in Fairfield now. I knew the address because it was listed in the court filings.
The house had a sudden, echoey quality without him in it.
Fifty-one years is a long time to share space with someone. Their absence has a sound.
I kept busy.
I documented. I photographed every room in the house for appraisal purposes, as Robert had requested. I organized thirty years of tax returns that I had kept in a filing cabinet in the basement—the kind of careful recordkeeping that Gerald had always mocked slightly as Dorothy’s paper museum.
That paper museum, as it turned out, contained evidence of income patterns, asset acquisitions, and contribution histories that Dr. Pratt found extremely useful.
And then, on a Thursday in late August, Gerald showed up at the house unannounced.
He was not alone. His sister Moren was with him.
Moren is seventy years old and has always believed that Gerald can do no fundamental wrong, a faith she has maintained through considerable evidence to the contrary.
They stood in my doorway—my doorway—and Gerald said they needed to talk.
I let them in because I am not rude.
We sat in the living room. Moren positioned herself beside Gerald on the sofa like a second-chair attorney.
Gerald began with what he clearly believed was a reasonable proposition. If I dropped the forensic audit, withdrew the dissipation claim, and accepted the settlement his attorney had drafted—the house at assessed value, no retirement account distribution, a token alimony—he would make sure I was taken care of.
“Taken care of,” I repeated.
“Financially supported,” he said. “I’m not a monster, Dorothy.”
“No one said you were.”
“Then be reasonable.”
Moren leaned forward. “Dorothy, you’re dragging this out, and it’s hurting everyone. Think about the children. Michael and Karen have had to take sides. This isn’t fair to them.”
“Karen chose her side,” I said. “I didn’t ask her to.”
“You hired Fitch?” Moren said, her voice rising.
“Yes,” I said. “I did.”
Gerald’s tone shifted then. He had come in calm, performing reasonableness, but I had not given him the response he’d rehearsed for. His jaw tightened.
“Dorothy, I’ve spoken to Whitmore. If you persist with this audit, we are going to contest everything. The house value, your contribution claims, your work history—or lack thereof. We will make this expensive and we will make it very long.”
“I understand,” I said.
“You could lose.”
“I might,” I agreed pleasantly.
He stared at me.
This was not going as planned.
Good, I thought.
Moren played her final card.
“She’s going to destroy this family,” she said to Gerald, speaking about me as though I had left the room. “She’s being vindictive. This isn’t the Dorothy I know.”
I looked at Moren.
“Moren,” I said, “the Dorothy you know spent fifty-one years keeping her feelings to herself for the sake of domestic harmony. You might want to get acquainted with the other one.”
They left fifteen minutes later.
After the door closed, I sat very still in the living room.
My hands, I noticed, were not shaking. My heart was beating harder than usual, but steadily.
The threats had been real. Gerald had the money to make the proceedings longer and more expensive, and I knew it. Whitmore was capable. This was not yet won.
But I also noticed something else.
They had come here.
They had driven to my house in person to ask me to stop.
People only do that when they are worried.
Still, the visit left its mark. I was seventy-one years old, and the weight of sustained conflict had accumulated in my body in ways I couldn’t entirely will away.
That weekend, I telephoned Karen and told her I needed three days.
I drove up to my friend Louise’s house in Vermont. She has a small place on Lake Champlain, and we have known each other since college.
I sat on her dock in the September sun and did very little.
On the third morning, I watched the lake and thought about nothing.
And in that silence, the decision that had been forming underneath all the noise became completely clear.
I would not stop.
Not because I was angry.
Because I was right.
I drove home Sunday evening and called Robert Monday morning.
“Keep going,” I said.
