My Wedding Was a Fake, So I Claimed My Fortune and a Billionaire novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Missing Record
Lenora asks the county for her marriage certificate and finds no record, follows the tip to Atlanta, and drops her ring into her husband's water glass in front of his real wife.
The clerk at the Chatham County courthouse typed my name three times and shook her head three times.
"Calhoun, Lenora," she said. "Foster, Davis. Any spelling you like."
"We married here three years ago," I said. "In this building."
She turned the monitor so I could see the empty search box.
"Then somebody lost it, hon. Because nobody filed it."
I stood at the counter holding my grandmother's trust letter.
My trustee's lawyer wanted a certified copy of my marriage certificate by Friday.
My thirtieth birthday was nineteen days away, and that was the day her trust handed me the wharf.
I had kept the certificate in a frame above our bed for three years.
"Can you check the day again?" I asked.
She checked six days around it.
She checked the whole month.
Then she gave me a kind look I will never forget, the look you give a woman on a train platform who just missed her train.
I went out to the car and sat with my hands on the wheel.
There was a cream envelope on the passenger seat that had come in my mailbox four days before.
No stamp, no return address, my name typed in the middle.
Inside was one card.
Ask Chatham County for your marriage record. Then drive to Atlanta. Sunday, one o'clock, Brasserie Marchand on Peachtree.
I had thrown it in the trash twice and taken it out twice.
It was Sunday.
It was eleven o'clock.
I drove to Atlanta with the radio off.
Four hours later I parked across the street from a restaurant with a green awning and a window as tall as a door.
Through the glass I could see the tables.
At a round table by the window sat a woman with a honey-brown bob, a little boy in a green dinosaur sweatshirt.
My husband.
Davis was laughing.
He had his hand on the back of the boy's chair, and the boy was showing him a plastic stegosaurus.
He kissed the woman's temple.
The boy said, "Daddy, look."
I got out of the car.
I do not remember crossing the street.
I remember the host saying, "Ma'am, do you have a reservation?" and my voice saying, "I'm joining the Fosters."
I remember the carpet.
Davis saw me when I was ten feet away.
His whole face dropped.
"Lenora," he said.
The woman looked up.
She had tired, kind brown eyes, and she smiled at me.
"Do you two know each other?" she asked.
"No," Davis said.
"Yes," I said.
The boy looked from his father to me.
I could hear the restaurant go quiet around us, one table at a time.
"I'm Lenora Calhoun," I said to her. "I've been married to Davis for three years."
Her smile stayed on her face for a second after the rest of her left it.
"That's not possible," she said. "I'm his wife. Imogen. We've been married seven years."
"Lenora, don't," Davis said. "She's a stalker, Imogen, I'll explain in the car."
I looked at the ring on my left hand.
It was a plain gold band that he'd slid on at a courthouse I now knew had no record of us.
I pulled it off.
It came off easily.
It always had.
I picked up Davis's water glass, dropped the ring in with a small clean plunk, and set the glass in front of his plate.
"Keep it," I said. "I'd hate for you to run out of wives."
A man at the next table said, "Oh my God."
Davis stood so fast his chair fell over.
"Lenora, listen to me."
I didn't.
I walked out through the whole silent room with my back straight and my keys in my fist.
The street was loud and bright after the quiet.
I got as far as the curb before my knees quit.
A hand closed around my wrist, warm and hard, and held me up.
"Easy," a man said.
I swung around to hit whoever it was.
My palm landed flat on a gray wool vest and a chest.
He didn't flinch.
He was very tall.
His head was shaved, his dark beard was trimmed close, and the hand on my wrist wore a gold signet ring.
"Lenora Calhoun," he said. "I'm the one who mailed you the card."
His voice was low, with Louisiana worn smooth in it.
"I know what Davis owes my bank," he said. "And I know you walked in there wearing a ring he bought with your own money."
I should have pulled away.
I didn't.
His thumb moved once along the inside of my wrist, where my pulse was going.
"You can drive home to that house and let him talk you around," he said. "Or you can get in my car."
A black car had stopped at the curb with its back door open.
Behind me, through the glass, Davis was shouting my name.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"Auden Perrault."
He said it.
"Get in the car, Lenora."
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