My Mafia Husband Never Filed Our Marriage, So I Walked Out Pregnant novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Withdrawn
At her parents' house her father goes silent, and at the clerk's office she learns Damian pulled the certificate himself the day after the wedding.
Lena read the text twice in the cab and deleted it without answering.
Then she told the driver to take her to Queens anyway.
Her mother opened the door of the row house before Lena reached the top step.
"You didn't call," her mother said. "Where's Damian?"
"Not here."
Her mother looked at her bare left hand.
She did not ask.
She took Lena's coat, put a kettle on and set out the good cups, the ones kept for funerals and bad news.
Her father sat at the kitchen table with his reading glasses pushed up on his forehead and a ledger book open in front of him.
He had kept books for a shipping company for thirty-one years, and he still did the household accounts by hand every Sunday.
Today was Tuesday.
He closed the book when she came in.
"Dad," Lena said. "What does Damian's driver bring you every month?"
Her father's hand stayed flat on the cover.
"Interest on a loan," he said. "A kindness. Your husband is a generous man."
"He's not my husband."
Her mother put the kettle down hard.
"Lena."
"The marriage was never filed. Phoebe said it to his face and he didn't deny it. He's engaged to another woman."
Her mother sat down slowly.
Her father did not move at all.
That was what Lena remembered afterward.
A man who had cried at the courthouse, who had cried when she was born and when she graduated, heard that his daughter had been made a fool of and kept his face perfectly still.
"Dad?"
"We'll sort it out in the morning," he said. "Go and sleep in your old room."
"Aren't you angry?"
"I'm tired, sweetheart."
He took his glasses off his forehead, folded them and put them in his shirt pocket.
His hand was shaking.
She lay awake in her childhood bed with the report under her pillow and her palm over the small flat place below her ribs.
Through the wall she heard her parents arguing in whispers.
She caught one word from her mother.
"Tell her," her mother said.
Her father said something she could not hear, and the whispering stopped.
At nine the next morning Lena stood in line at the city clerk's office in lower Manhattan with the copy of the certificate from her own drawer.
She had never needed the copy before.
It had a raised seal and her signature and Damian's, and Phoebe's under WITNESS in blue pen.
The clerk behind the glass was a heavy woman with a pen on a chain who did not look up until Lena slid the paper under the window.
"I need to know if this is on record," Lena said.
"Names?"
"Lena Hartwell and Damian Karras. Six months ago, in October."
The woman typed.
The screen lit her glasses.
She stopped typing.
"Ma'am, are you the bride?"
"Yes."
"I have it received," the clerk said. "The day of the ceremony."
Relief hit Lena so hard she gripped the counter.
"Then it's real."
"I didn't say that."
The clerk turned the screen a few degrees so Lena could see it.
"It was received and then withdrawn the next day, in person, by the groom. Request to remove the application. He signed for it himself."
"Withdrawn," Lena said.
"Nothing is on file. Legally, ma'am, there was never a marriage."
"He told me it was done."
"I'm sorry."
The woman said it flatly and went back to her screen.
Behind Lena a man cleared his throat.
She took her paper back.
It was a very nice piece of paper with a very nice seal, and it meant nothing at all.
She walked out into the cold and stood on the steps, breathing in short pulls.
She had known it since the study door.
Hearing it from a stranger with a pen on a chain still made her sick.
Her phone rang.
The screen said Dad.
"Where are you?" her father asked.
His voice was thin.
"Lower Manhattan. I came to check."
"Come home. Please. Don't go anywhere near him."
"Dad, what did you do?"
He was quiet for so long she thought the call had dropped.
"Come home," he said again, and hung up.
She lowered the phone.
Across the street, at the curb, a black car idled with its engine running.
The back window was down.
Damian sat in the back seat with his coat open and his eyes on her, and he did not look as though he had slept.
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