Not His Wife novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Booking Card

Anson's POV

I left her asleep before it was light.

She lay on her side in the guest room with one hand under her cheek.

Her gold hoops sat on the nightstand where she had dropped them.

I wrote "Back by nine" on the pad by her phone and did not sign it.

Then I went back to the church.

Saint Brigid's was brick, with a wet parking lot and a side door that opened at seven.

Ivy's aunt had whispered to me over the cake that the parish kept a ledger.

I had not told Ivy I was going.

I knew that was the kind of thing I had promised not to do.

I told myself I would tell her when I had something worth telling.

The parish secretary was a gray woman with a cardigan and a space heater under her desk.

She heard "wedding records" and brought out a green book as thick as a phone directory.

"Which year?" she said.

"Four Junes ago. The fourteenth."

She turned pages with a licked finger.

"Tolbert," she said. "Tolbert and Lathrop."

"May I see it?"

"It's public." She spun the book toward me. "Though I will tell you it was a peculiar one."

"Peculiar how?"

"The groom never came to the office," she said. "Not once. The maid of honor did everything."

I looked at the entry.

Names in blue ink, the date, the hour, the readings.

At the bottom, a line in another hand.

"License received from P. Dorsey, to be filed by same."

"She took it from Father at the altar," the secretary said. "I remember because it was nice of her."

"Nobody ever got a copy back, though. I remember that too."

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