The Wedding She Survived novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Two Forged Names

Killian's dead father's letter admits the forgery, the check copy Willa's mother kept is gone, and Willa tells him his son's full name.

"Say that again," I said.

"A man from my father's law firm met me in the vestibule," Killian said. "He had a paper with your signature on it."

"I never signed anything."

"It said you'd taken two million dollars to leave me before the vows. It said you were waiting in a car at the side door."

"I was waiting at the front doors. In a veil."

"I know that now."

He held out the letter again, and this time I took it.

His father's handwriting was small and square, and the first line was not a greeting.

*I forged her name and I am not sorry enough.*

I read it standing under the porch light with my arms crossed tight.

The old man wrote that his lawyer had copied my signature from the marriage license forms.

He wrote that he had paid a person to make sure I believed Killian had taken money and run.

*Two million dollars left the company account for that person. I called it a kindness to you both. It was a theft.*

He didn't name the person.

He didn't say sorry to me, either, only to his son.

I folded it up and gave it back.

"Your father is dead," I said, "so he can't be asked anything."

"I know."

"Somebody took that money, then."

"Somebody did," Killian said. "It wasn't me, and I don't think it was you."

"You don't think."

"Willa, you would have had to be a very good liar to stand at those doors the way you did. The whole church talked about it for months."

That hurt more than I wanted it to.

"My mother has the check copy," I said. "A courier left it at the house the same afternoon. It had your name on it and your signature on the back."

He went very still.

"Show me."

"Wait here."

I opened the door and went into my own hallway with my legs shaking.

The kitchen was warm and loud.

Poppy was telling Finn that he held his fork wrong, and Sebastian was under the table with a dish towel on his head.

My mother stood at the sink, drying a plate that was already dry.

"Mom, where's the copy of the check?" I said. "The one the courier brought. You kept it in the drawer by the stove."

She turned around slowly and set the plate down.

"Oh, baby," she said. "I threw that out years ago."

"You threw it out?"

"When we painted the kitchen. I couldn't stand to look at the thing." She wiped her hands on her cardigan. "Why, what did he say to you? Did he tell you something?"

"He says he never took any money."

"Of course he says that."

"His father wrote a letter."

"A dead man's letter," my mother said gently. "He'll say anything with a dead man's name on it. Don't go getting your hopes up, Willa."

"I'm not."

"I know you aren't. I'm only saying I'd hate to see you hurt twice."

She put her hand on my cheek.

It was the same hand that had held mine through the whole of labor, and I leaned into it for one second.

Then I went back out to the porch.

Killian was sitting on the top step with his elbows on his knees.

"It's gone," I said. "My mother threw it out."

"So it's your word against a forged one, and mine against a forged one." He rubbed his face. "We have two forgeries and no check."

"We have nothing."

"I'll take a paternity test tomorrow if you want one."

"I don't want one. I can see his eyes, and so can you."

"Then what do you want?"

"I want you to answer a question. Where were you for five years?"

"Hamburg. My father put me in charge of a shipyard there the week after the wedding and wouldn't let me come home."

"You could have come home."

"I believed you'd sold me," he said. "I told myself I was done."

I let that sit between us.

"We have this," he said then. He looked up at me. "I want the name, Willa. I asked you before and you carried him inside. Sebastian what?"

I looked at the man on my step, thin and gray-templed and wrecked.

I could have said Gleeson and left it there.

"Sebastian Killian Gleeson," I said.

He didn't move.

"You gave him my name."

"I gave him a middle name. I didn't have a lot of choice. I was alone, and it was the only part of you I had left."

His shoulders folded forward, and he put his fist against his mouth.

I stood there and watched a man cry on my steps, and I felt nothing I could use.

"There's one more thing in the letter," he said at last, thickly. "He didn't just pay somebody to talk to you."

"What else?"

"The money was real. Two million dollars left that account the week of our wedding, and somebody in Maine cashed it."

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