That’s another issue I’m bumping up against. The millions of dollars I stand to make when all of this is said and done. I’ve spent so much time thinking through every elaborate piece of this plan; I don’t know how I missed something so vital.

Here’s what happened. When I was home in New Haven earlier last month, visiting my family for the first time since I left in October, Heather asked me why I hadn’t been transferring payments to our Chase account from my new bank account in Dubai. My new bank account in Dubai—it took me a couple of moments to understand what she could even be referring to. I swear, Dr. K, in my new life as a domestic criminal, there’s a hell of a lot to keep track of. Thank God for this fucking diary.

So, right. My fake bank account in Dubai where I’m receiving a salary from my fake job in the United Arab Emirates. That bank account.

I promised Heather I would get right on transferring the money as soon as I got back to Dubai, and she said that I’d better because the balance in our Chase account was getting low.

Now, this is the part I hadn’t adequately formulated. In keeping my eye so firmly rooted on the prize, I’d forgotten that the prize would not actually be available until several months after my marriage to Skye in September. Possibly longer than that, because we all know legal shit takes forever. And in the meantime, I’d promised my wife steady payments from my new and improved salary.

I don’t know what I was thinking, promising Heather those payments so far in advance. I’d nearly forgotten about it until yesterday, when I got back to my motel room after being at Andy Raymond’s and saw a text message from Heather that froze my blood.

Where the HELL is the money you said you’d transfer? It’s been over a month and nothing is coming in. Our refrigerator broke and I had to pay the guy to fix it and there’s currently $71 in our Chase account.

I’m telling you, Doc, I can’t catch a break. I barely slept last night, but somewhere between three and four in the morning I came to what I believe will be a solid solution.

Now that Skye and I are engaged, we have every reason to open a joint checking account. Couples do it all the time; presenting the idea certainly wouldn’t be cause for suspicion. I’ve already been honest with Skye that I haven’t had the greatest year financially. So, what I’ll do is, I’ll tell her I’m still waiting on several payments to come in from clients, but that in the meantime I’m short on change to cover the cost of the groomsmen’s custom tuxes along with some other wedding-related expenses. I’ll explain that that’s what made me think of proposing a joint bank account, which we’ll probably want soon anyway.

I’ll call Skye on my drive back to New York later today and present the idea. She’s too crazy for me to question it.

APRIL 10, 2019

Dear Dr. K,

Ta-da! This morning, Skye and I officially opened a joint account at Bank of America.

I knew she’d be fully on board, and she is, so long as I promise to update the new direct-deposit information on our Con Ed, Spectrum, and National Grid accounts. Skye hates dealing with bills and bank accounts and numbers in general, which is perfect, because now she won’t have to. I completed most of the paperwork while Skye scrolled through Instagram, oblivious. Once everything was finalized and I saw the numbers—the amount of money in my own checking account—I nearly collapsed in front of the teller.

After we left the bank, Skye headed home and I made my way to the “WeWork” I supposedly work from, actually a coffee shop on the Upper West Side called JoJo’s with Wi-Fi and free refills. I don’t always come to JoJo’s—sometimes I opt for a different cafe. Sometimes I go to a museum or to the movies or take the subway to Brooklyn and walk until it’s time to head home to Skye. But today I sit in JoJo’s thinking about the numbers in my bank account and how I made that happen, and it’s really something, Dr. K. I think about how I’m going to proceed from here.

Now, I can’t exactly transfer money to Heather’s account from mine and Skye’s; I doubt Skye would notice, but still, it’s too risky to keep a paper trail. So I’ll opt for another route. If I space out my withdrawals, if I take out just $1,750 every week, that means I can manually deposit $3,500 into Heather’s Chase account twice a month. That’s more than double what I was bringing in at PK Adamson, and it’ll be plenty to tide Heather over until the real money hits.

Even if at some point Skye does notice the withdrawals, I can say it’s wedding related. I can say it’s money I used to buy her a wedding present, and that I’d paid in cash to ensure a surprise. But trust me, she’s not going to notice. With the magnitude of our account balance and all the wildly extravagant transactions being made in advance of the wedding and honeymoon, Skye would have to be looking for something to notice an extra seven grand a month.

Off to the bank now. Wish me luck.

APRIL 12, 2019

Dear Dr. K,

In the words of Beyoncé, I’m feeling myself.

I was just at Chase, where I successfully deposited the first biweekly payment of $3,500 for Heather. I immediately texted her to let her know that after a few hiccups with my UAE bank, the money had finally gone through and that there would be lots more where it came from. When she replied a few moments later with a single heart emoji, my own heart skipped a beat.

After all she’s been through, Heather deserves this, Dr. K. She’s the love of my life and the mother of my children, and something about providing for my family makes me feel almost whole again, makes me know the insanity of the past seven months is well worth it. Life hasn’t been fair to our family, so why should we be fair to life? That’s how I see it. You can argue that this outlook fuels the problem, that the most important thing in this world is having integrity, but I’ll tell you something, Dr. K—I’m doing what I’m doing with integrity, with my heart behind my every step.

Chapter Twenty-One

Heather

JUNE 1990

Peter was wrapping up his project, and he and Libby and the kids were slated to leave Langs Valley at the end of June. For me, their departure was a ticking time bomb, and I wanted nothing more than to zip Gus and me inside one of Libby’s oversize suitcases. The prospect of getting through senior year in Langs Valley without Burke or Libby was a daunting nightmare. But as Libby reminded me, a year is short in the scheme of things; all I had to do was keep my head down, continue to ace my classes, and nail my college applications. After that, the world would be my oyster.

My second-semester grades had come in even better than first semester’s. A’s in physics, pre-calculus, and U.S. history and A-minuses in English and Spanish. To top it off, I’d gotten into three APs for the first semester of senior year. Freshman and sophomore years I’d never gotten anything above a B. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you stop partying and lose all your friends.

In addition to my near-perfect grades, I’d also gotten my first round of SAT scores back and had scored in the ninetieth percentile. I’d triple-checked the envelope to make sure the results had been sent to the correct person. Libby said my score was so good that I didn’t even need to take the test again, unless I wanted to aim even higher.

I was overjoyed and slightly shocked, but I knew I deserved every bit of what I was getting. Aside from babysitting duties and hanging out with Libby, I’d done nothing but study for the past seven months. I’d spent countless Saturday nights poring over my SAT prep book while Burke and Kyla and all my other ex-friends smoked crack and took Ecstasy and rolled their brains out. I was going to go to college, and they weren’t.

One evening after leaving Libby’s, I dropped Gus at the Carsons’ and drove to the A&P to pick up some groceries. It was past eight o’clock when I got to the grocery store, the light still long and soft. June was always my favorite time of year, partly because of the longer days and late sunsets, but also because my birthday fell on the seventeenth. I don’t know why I liked my birthday so much—my parents never gave me presents as a kid, and I don’t remember ever having a party. I guess I’d always loved that there was this one day—of all the calendar days in the whole year—that was just for me.

As I wrangled a shopping cart free from the stack, Burke walked out of the A&P. He nearly stumbled right into me, and we made eye contact that lasted a beat too long for either of us to pretend we hadn’t seen the other.