Chapter One

Faith Thomas Tucker scanned the menu, then placed her order.

“And may I please have an amaretto sour?”

“Absolutely. I’ll have that right out.”

When the young man returned with their drinks, Faith held hers aloft.

“To surviving another week at that place,” she intoned, and Trisha and Melanie both said ‘hear, hear’ as glasses were clinked together.

Their customary Friday night toast accomplished, they settled in to talk. They’d all started in Clover & Grimson’s accounting department within a week of each other and had become fast friends.

“Hey, don’t you have an anniversary coming up?” Melanie asked Faith. “How many years now?”

“Kevin and I have been together for twelve years, and married for ten, come next Saturday,” Faith confirmed.

“Aw, a milestone anniversary,” Trisha exclaimed. “Doing anything special?”

Faith shrugged.

“He puts in even more hours than I do. To be honest, I’m not even sure he remembers when our anniversary is.”

The waiter brought out their meals, and Faith had just picked up her fork to begin eating when her phone chirped loudly.

Setting her fork down, she pulled the device out of her purse, and her brow furrowed when she read the text that she’d received from an unfamiliar number.

You might want to head home now.

Sorry, I think you’ve got the wrong number, she texted back, and went to set down her phone. But it immediately chirped again.

If your name is Faith Thomas Tucker, then I’ve got the right number. Trust me on this. You need to head home. Now.

Who is this?

Someone who’s doing you a solid. Go home, Faith.

“Guys, I need to go,” she said.

“Everything okay?” Melanie asked.

“I’m not sure,” she admitted, and waved the waiter over.

“I’m so sorry, something’s come up and I need to leave,” she told him. “May I please have a to-go container, and the check?”

***

Twenty minutes later, she was pulling onto her block when her phone chimed again.

She pulled into her driveway, killed the lights, then looked at her phone.

Might wanna hit ‘record’.

“What the hell?” she muttered, as much creeped out as she was irritated.

She got out of her car and let herself in through her front door, and immediately noticed something wasn’t right. There was something lying on the carpet in the hallway.

She set her purse down on the foyer table, pulled her phone out of it, opened the camera feature, and pressed ‘record’ before she walked any further into her home.

When she reached the object in the hall, she began to shake.

It was a woman’s silk blouse, and it wasn’t hers.

Twelve steps further and a left turn led down another short hallway to the master bedroom, where a noise that turned her stomach was already assaulting her ears.

Hands trembling, she held up her cell phone and pointed it at the bed, making sure that her husband and the skank he was in the middle of banging were still in frame, and she captured almost a minute of quality video and audio.

Then she cleared her throat loudly, and when that didn’t get their attention, she yelled.

“How could you?” she screamed at the top of her lungs.

Kevin’s head whipped around, and his eyes went huge when he saw her.

“I don’t want to be married anymore,” he babbled.

“Wish granted, you bastard!” Faith snarled, turned, and marched to the closet to grab a suitcase, staying in the same room as her betrayal only long enough to grab a few changes of clothes and some toiletries.

“Faith. Faith, wait. I didn’t mean it,” he said plaintively as he followed her back out into the living room.

“Didn’t mean what, Kevin? Which part? Screwing someone else in our bed, getting caught, or what you said? Because I gotta tell you, you just messed up big on all three counts.”

He reached for her, but she batted his hand away.

“Stay away from me. We’re done,” she hissed.

She looked over his shoulder at his mistress, who had wrapped up in a sheet and was standing in the doorway.

“He’s all yours, honey. Good luck with him being faithful,” Faith sneered, and took great satisfaction in slamming the front door on her way out.

She drove three blocks, then pulled over and texted her anonymous tipster.

I don’t know who you are but thank you. You just did me the biggest favor of my life.

The answer was swift.

I'm her soon-to-be EX husband, and if you need any further proof, I am happy to send it to you.

Faith attached what she'd recorded as a file and typed back Deal. Let's trade. I think you can probably use this too then hit 'send.'

The next thing she did was call the lawyer that she and Kevin had used for years.

“Marty,” she began, “I’d like to retain you as my divorce attorney.”

***

One year later, on a sunny spring afternoon, Faith Thomas sighed and rubbed her eyes.

I love what I do, but damn, it’s hard on my vision sometimes, she thought, as the spreadsheets blurred together.

A lot had changed in twelve months. She’d gone from being an accounting drone in Clover & Grimson’s office in Philadelphia to transferring to their Dallas branch. Now, she was working as the Accounting Manager / CFO at a privately-owned regional manufacturing company in Fort Worth, Texas.

Faith hadn’t planned to make any more changes for a while, not after the tumultuous recent events. She had sent them a resume on a whim months ago, then forgotten about it. 

But they’d called her at the beginning of the year, out of the blue, and made an offer she literally could not refuse. Not to mention it was closer to her home in Pantego, and her new role allowed her to use more of the MBA she’d acquired significant student loan debt to complete.

Despite having only been on board three months, she’d already identified several cost saving opportunities as well as plugged some gaps that had concerned her from a fraud prevention and segregation of duties point of view. The drone work she’d endured so long at the mega-corporate level was paying huge dividends, because she now was overprepared in dealing with GAAP compliance from being in a public entity before. Her successes so far had greatly bolstered her confidence, and that of the President, to whom she reported directly.

Now, she was wrangling her first quarter end close; one of the few times at her new job that called for Saturday work.

Still, a nice change from every Saturday all-the-time, like at the other place, Faith reflected.

She stretched her arms, got up and flexed her leg muscles, rubbed her eyes again, and rolled her shoulders trying to work out the kinks caused by being hunched over a keyboard for so long.

“Okay, break’s over, back to it, girl,” she chided herself. “These general ledger reconciliations aren’t going to do themselves.”