One evening, I reached across the table and covered his hand with mine. “Eric, talk to me.”
He pulled his hand back gently, almost absentmindedly.
“I said it’s fine, Meredith.”
He had not used my name like that in years. It felt formal. Distant.
I began to notice other things. He started keeping his phone with him at all times. If it buzzed, he would glance at it quickly, then turn the screen face down. He took longer showers. He went out to “get some air” after dinner, walking around the block alone.
I lay awake at night, staring at the ceiling. The cracks in the plaster looked like maps. I traced them with my eyes and wondered if our life had been a lie.
Then I would feel guilty. Eric had never given me a reason not to trust him. He was steady. Reliable. The kind of man who fixed the neighbor’s fence without being asked.
But that bag.
One afternoon, I decided to deep-clean the bedroom closet. It was my day off. The apartment was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator. I pulled out old coats, shoes we never wore, and a box of Christmas decorations.
That was when I noticed an old duffel bag buried under his clothes.
My heart skipped.
That bag had not been downstairs in over 15 years. It used to sit in the attic collecting dust. I remembered it clearly. We had packed it when we first moved in, filled with random things we never needed.
Why was it here?
I knelt and tugged it free. Dust did not puff out the way it used to. It looked… maintained.
I told myself not to jump to conclusions.
Maybe he was planning to donate things. Maybe he was organizing.
Still, my pulse quickened.
I lifted it.
It was heavier than it should have been.
My hands trembled as I unzipped it.
The sound of the zipper felt louder than it should have, like it was echoing in the room.
Inside were stacks of cash.
Neat bundles of $100 bills. Thick. Tightly wrapped. Not just a few thousand.
It looked like hundreds of thousands.
For a moment, my brain refused to understand what I was seeing. I actually thought they were props. Movie money. Something fake.
I reached in and touched one of the bundles. The paper felt real. Crisp.
Later, I counted roughly in my head.
Close to $280,000.
