Isolation had.
Fear had.
And the people I trusted to protect her had made every one of those things worse.
For days, guilt consumed me.
I replayed every conversation from Canada.
Every time Lucy said she was tired.
Every time the video mysteriously froze.
Every time my mother interrupted our calls.
Every time Lucy insisted she was fine.
There had been signs.
I simply hadn’t understood them.
One night in the hospital, Lucy woke and found me sitting beside her.
“You should sleep,” she whispered.
“So should you.”
She smiled weakly.
“I am sleeping.”
I almost laughed.
Then she studied my face.
“You’re blaming yourself.”
I didn’t answer.
That was answer enough.
“Nathan.”
I looked at her.
“You didn’t do this.”
“But I should have known.”
“How?”
“I should have seen it.”
“They made sure you didn’t.”
I lowered my head.
“I left you with them.”
“You left because we needed the money.”
“I should have come home.”
Lucy squeezed my hand.
“They kept telling me you were almost finished. They said if I caused problems, you might lose your contract.”
I closed my eyes.
Even then, they had used me to control her.
“I was afraid,” Lucy admitted.
“Of them?”
She hesitated.
“Of losing you.”
That hurt more than anything.
“You could never lose me.”
“I know that now.”
I leaned forward and kissed her forehead.
From that moment, I stopped asking myself what I should have done four years earlier.
I focused on what I could do now.
And I wasn’t finished.
The next morning, my attorney arrived.
He carried a leather briefcase and an expression that told me the situation was even worse than I already knew.
We sat in a small consultation room at the hospital.
He placed several documents on the table.
“Nathan,” he said, “we found additional irregularities.”
“What kind?”
He pushed the first page toward me.
I recognized Lucy’s name immediately.
Her signature appeared at the bottom.
But Lucy had never signed it.
Then came another document.
And another.
Forms supposedly authorizing financial decisions.
Documents connected to accounts.
Papers giving permissions Lucy said she had never granted.
My family hadn’t merely spent money intended for my wife.
Someone had apparently forged her signature.
My attorney explained that the documents would need to be examined carefully and that the appropriate authorities could determine what laws, if any, had been violated.
But one thing was already clear.
This was no longer a family argument.
It was evidence.
Evidence could be preserved.
Transactions could be traced.
Documents could be examined.
And lies that had survived for years could finally be tested against facts.
Later that afternoon, Theresa arrived at the hospital.
Brianna came with her.
Neither of them was allowed into Lucy’s room.
I met them in the hallway.
My mother looked furious.
“You’ve turned everyone against us.”
I stared at her.
“I haven’t told everyone anything.”
“You hired investigators. You brought lawyers into this family.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“Your choices brought lawyers into this family.”
Brianna stepped forward.
“So what happens now?”
I looked at her.
For once, she sounded nervous.
“Now?”
I glanced toward Lucy’s hospital room.
“Now my wife gets treatment.”
I looked back at them.
“Now every dollar I sent gets accounted for.”
Theresa’s jaw tightened.
“And then?”
“Then every document gets examined.”
My mother went pale.
Brianna said nothing.
“And after that,” I continued, “you explain your decisions to people who aren’t related to you.”
Theresa stared at me as though she were looking at a stranger.
Maybe she was.
The son she remembered would have tried to keep the peace.
He would have worried about embarrassing the family.
He would have listened to excuses.