My Double Proxy Marriage to a Billionaire novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Already Married
Tilly comes to sign a marriage her father arranged and learns she has been Mrs. Engdahl since June; the billionaire says she is not his wife, because his wife texted him this morning.
The lawyer slid a paper across the table and said I had been married since June.
I had come to the fifty-second floor of the Engdahl tower to sign a marriage contract.
I had not come to find out I'd already signed one.
My father had given me two instructions that morning on the phone.
Wear something nice.
Sign wherever they point.
My stepsister Blair had walked me to the car with a travel mug of coffee and told me to smile.
I had come straight from the yard in my work jacket and my steel-toe boots, with engine grease still in the creases of my knuckles.
The nice clothes had gone to the pawn shop in August.
"Ms. Hagedorn," the lawyer said. "Congratulations."
"On what?"
"On your marriage to Anders Engdahl. The proxy ceremony was filed on June fourteenth."
I looked at the paper.
It was a certificate from the state of Montana, with a gold seal and a blue border.
Under the bride's line was my name, Matilda Hagedorn, in handwriting that was not mine.
Under that, in small print, it said: by proxy, Harlan Hagedorn, father of the bride.
My father had stood at a courthouse counter four months ago and said I do for me.
I read it twice.
Then I read the groom's line, which said another man had stood in for him too.
"Double proxy," the lawyer said, as if it were a nice thing to say.
"Neither of us was there."
"That is the arrangement. Mr. Engdahl's grandmother asked for it to be done quietly."
"And my father agreed to it."
"Your father was very agreeable."
I thought of the sixty-one thousand dollars he'd said he owed the supplier last spring.
I thought of how the number had changed every time I asked.
"I'm not signing anything," I said.
"There's nothing left to sign. You only have to initial the acknowledgment."
I pulled the certificate off the table and folded it in half.
Then I folded it again and put it in my jacket pocket.
"That's a legal document," the lawyer said.
"It's got my name on it and I didn't write it. Sue me, then, and we'll all find out whose handwriting it is."
He opened his mouth.
The door at the end of the room opened first.
An old woman came in on a cane with a brass loon on the handle.
She was tiny, in an oatmeal cardigan and bright red lipstick.
She walked straight past the lawyer.
She stopped in front of me and took both my hands.
She turned them over and looked at the grease on my knuckles.
"Oh," she said. "Look at these."
"Ma'am, I think there's been a mistake."
"There has been a great many," she said. "None of them yours, I should think."
Her eyes were wet and very pleased.
"You have your mother's eyes," she said.
"She pulled my husband out of Lake Minnetonka in 1999 and wouldn't take a cup of coffee for it."
I hadn't heard anyone say my mother's name out loud in two years.
"Finally," the old woman said, and squeezed my fingers. "I am Greta. I have been waiting to meet you since June."
"Grandmother."
The man in the doorway did not raise his voice.
He was very tall and broad through the shoulders, in a navy suit and a grey tie.
His hair had gone salt and pepper years too early, and his beard was trimmed close.
He looked at me.
"Who is this?" Anders Engdahl said.
"Your wife," said the lawyer.
"No."
He said it quietly.
"Anders, she's Matilda Hagedorn. Harlan's daughter."
"My wife," he said, "is not wearing a work jacket."
"I'm not sure your wife is anything yet," I said. "Somebody wrote my name on a form and I would like to meet them."
His eyes moved over my face once, very slowly.
I had expected anger.
What I saw was something worse, which was a man who was perfectly calm and absolutely certain.
"Miss Hagedorn," he said, "I don't know what your father told you."
"He told me to wear something nice."
"I don't think he told you the truth."
He took out his phone and set it face up on the glass table between us.
"My wife texted me at seven fifty-eight this morning."
He touched the screen.
It was a long thread under my name.
The last message said: Good morning, husband. Wear the grey tie. I like you in the grey tie.
Anders Engdahl looked down at his tie.
Then he looked at me.
"She has told me good morning for three months," he said. "I have never once heard from you."
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