My best friend, Danielle Park, is a family law attorney. She’s a partner at Hollings & Park, on the twenty-second floor of a glass building on College Street. We’ve been friends since we were fourteen. She was my maid of honor.
She picked up on the second ring.
“Nora? It’s one in the morning. Is Maya okay?”
“Maya’s fine,” I said. “I need a lawyer.”
There was a pause on the line.
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” Danielle said.
She was there in sixteen. In sweatpants and her college sweatshirt, with her hair in a bun and a legal pad under her arm.
I played her the recording on my iPad. All forty-one seconds.
She listened to the whole thing without moving. When it ended, she put her hand flat on my kitchen table.
“Okay,” she said. Very calmly. “Nora. First question. Were you on that call?”
“Yes. I called him.”
“North Carolina is a one-party consent state,” Danielle said. “You were a party to that conversation. He kept the line open. You can record it. It’s legal. It’s admissible.”
She picked up her legal pad.
“Second question. Whose name is on the deed to this house?”
“Mine. Only mine. I bought it with Grandma Ruth’s trust. Three months before the wedding.”
Danielle smiled for the first time.
“Your grandmother was a very smart woman.”
“She was.”
“Third question. What else do you have?”
So I showed her. The savings account. The Grand Hyatt. Tiffany’s. The Ritz-Carlton in Asheville.
Danielle went through every page. She made notes. She circled things.
“This is dissipation of marital assets,” she said, tapping the savings account statement. “He spent twenty-four and a half thousand dollars of joint money on an affair. A court will make him pay that back. Every penny.”
She looked up at me.
“Nora. Do you know who she is?”
“No. Just her laugh.”
“Then we need to find out.” Danielle wrote a name on her legal pad and turned it toward me. “Marcus Webb. Private investigator. Former Charlotte-Mecklenburg detective. I use him on all my big cases. He’s expensive. He’s worth it.”
“How expensive?”
“Five thousand to start.”
I didn’t even blink.
“I’ll pay it out of my own account,” I said. “From Grandma’s trust. Not one dollar from anything joint.”
“Good,” Danielle said. “Now. What do you want, Nora? Really. What do you want to happen?”
I looked over at Maya, asleep in her bassinet. Her little fists up by her ears.
“I want him to look me in the eyes,” I said, “in front of everybody he’s ever lied to. And I want him to know I knew.”
Specialty: Quiet Comebacks & Personal Justice
David Reynolds focuses on stories where underestimated individuals regain control of their lives. His writing centers on measured decisions rather than dramatic outbursts — emphasizing preparation, patience, and the long game. His characters don’t shout; they act.