Everyone Knew She'd Leave Me but Me novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Cousin Erin

We sat in a booth at the diner across the street, and neither of us ordered anything.

Erin Ellison put a manila folder on the table and slid it toward me with two fingers.

"Open it," she said. "I'd rather you believe me than like me."

The first page was a marriage certificate from the Cook County Clerk in Chicago.

Dean Robert Clanton. Erin Jane Ellison.

The date was eight months ago, in March.

"A courthouse," she said. "I wore my work blazer. He said his mother wanted a big wedding in the spring, so we'd have the paper now and the party later."

"And he told you not to tell people at work."

She looked at me properly for the first time.

"He told you that too?"

"No. I heard the cousin part Friday."

I told her about the parking lot, and Dean's thumb on the screen, and Brooke laughing.

Erin's face stayed still the whole time.

Only her hand moved, once, to the chain at her collar, and then it dropped.

"Cousin Erin," she said. "I wondered how he'd phrase me."

She turned the second page toward me.

"He said the company had a rule that vice presidents couldn't date anyone in the building until the promotion review. When I said I'd never worked in his building, he said the board was old-fashioned and I'd have to be patient."

"That was a lie."

"I know that now."

The third page was a bank statement.

"Sixty thousand dollars. He said he needed it for a consulting company so he could quit someday and take me somewhere nice. It was my savings. I was a pharmacist for nine years and I had a very boring bank account."

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