I trusted him completely because he was my husband and because I loved him.
Everything would have continued normally if not for something that happened three days before his supposed flight. That afternoon Matthew came home earlier than usual carrying several boxes from a storage store. He placed them in the living room with visible enthusiasm.
“I’m getting prepared,” he said while cutting the tape on one box. “Living costs are higher out there, so I want to take some useful things with me.”
While he went upstairs to shower, I entered the home office because I needed to find some documents related to one of our rental contracts. His laptop was open on the desk.
I was not searching for anything unusual. I only wanted to locate a digital copy of a lease agreement for one of our tenants.
But instead I found something that changed everything. There was an email confirmation open on the screen. It was for a luxury apartment rental in Oak Brook, a suburb about forty minutes from our house.
The apartment was fully furnished and the contract duration was exactly two years.
Two registered residents were listed on the agreement. Matthew Ellison. And another name. Stephanie Dalton.
There was also a short note from the property manager written at the bottom of the message.
“Please include a crib in the master bedroom as requested.”
A crib.
For several seconds I simply stared at the screen without breathing. Then I began reading every single line carefully, making sure my eyes were not deceiving me.
The lease start date was the exact same day as his supposed flight to Seattle. He was not moving across the country. He was moving less than an hour away from our home.
And there was something else even worse. Stephanie Dalton was pregnant. I leaned back slowly in the chair and felt the air leave my lungs. My mind immediately jumped to the joint account we shared at a private bank branch on Michigan Avenue.
The balance was approximately $650,000. Most of that money came from the inheritance my parents left me after they d/ie/d in a car accident on a highway near Madison years earlier. Matthew had once insisted that we combine our finances into one joint account because, as he said at the time, married couples should operate with complete transparency.
At that moment everything suddenly made sense. His plan was simple and cruel at the same time. He would pretend to build a life in Seattle while gradually transferring money from our joint account to support his new partner and their child without me ever suspecting anything.
The day of the airport departure arrived quickly.
At O’Hare International Airport he hugged me tightly in front of the departure gates.
“This is for us,” he whispered softly.
I cried while holding him. But I was not crying because I would miss him. I was crying because I already knew the truth.
