The next morning, a nurse wheeled Hailey into the NICU. She stopped next to my son’s incubator.

She brought me coffee. Decaf. She’d asked the nurse what I was allowed to have.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know.”

“I believe you,” I said.

And I did.

Over the next week, we sat side by side in that NICU and put the pieces together.

The “business trips” were weeks at Hailey’s house in Greensboro. The hotel gifts came from a gas station near her neighborhood. The fake obituary was made on a free website. He’d paid twelve dollars for it.

And the money.

Jared had been moving money out of my firm’s operating account for four years. “Client entertainment.” “Equipment.” He’d used it to pay Hailey’s mortgage. Their wedding. Their honeymoon in Aruba.

Almost $90,000.

I gave everything to a detective and a lawyer.

Jared was charged with bigamy, embezzlement, and identity fraud for the fake death notice.