Not His Wife novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Single
At the bank, Ivy learns the county lists her as unmarried; the clerk's record shows her husband married to her maid of honor, and a stranger on the courthouse steps says that woman is his wife.
The loan officer turned her monitor toward me and told me I was not married.
I had come to First Westbridge Bank on Harlow Street at 9:40 on a Monday morning to cosign my husband's loan.
Reed had sent the application on Friday.
He had texted me three times since breakfast.
"Sign where she tells you. It's only a signature. Love you, babe."
The officer had a bowl of peppermints on her desk and a smile she was working hard to keep.
"Mrs. Lathrop, I'm going to read you what the system pulled," she said. "Your date of birth, your social security number, the address on Linden Road."
"That's me."
"Those match an Ivy Tolbert. Not an Ivy Lathrop."
"Tolbert is my maiden name. I never changed it on anything but the church program."
"Yes, ma'am." She cleared her throat. "And the county lists you as single."
I read the word on her screen twice.
It was one word, and it was wrong.
"The county made a mistake," I said. "I got married at Saint Brigid's four Junes ago. I wore white. Sixty people ate chicken."
"I believe you," she said, and I think she did. "But the bank only trusts the county's file. With no marriage on it, you aren't his spouse, and a spouse is who he needs."
"He listed me as his spouse."
"He did."
"Then what happens to the loan?"
"Mr. Lathrop's approval is good for seven days," she said. "After that the rate lock ends and he starts over."
She slid a peppermint across the desk.
"Most small lenders never look at the county," she added quietly. "We do."
I did not take the peppermint.
I took my purse and walked out past the tellers and the potted palm, and I did not sign anything.
The County Records office was in the basement of the courthouse downtown.
It was raining by then, a thin grey rain that got into your collar.
I took a number from a machine and waited forty minutes on a bench bolted to the floor.
My phone buzzed.
It was Alyssa.
"Bank thing done?? Call me after. I'm free all day. Love you to pieces."
Alyssa Dorsey had been my best friend since we were twelve.
She had held my bouquet at Saint Brigid's and fixed my hem on the church steps with a safety pin from her own purse.
She had also offered to file our marriage license, because she knew how much I hated lines.
"Give it to me, I'll drop it at the clerk on Monday," she'd said, and she had taken it right out of the priest's hand.
A month later she mailed us a framed copy of the certificate as a wedding present.
It hung in my front hall, between my mother's picture and the coat hooks.
I typed back, "Still at the bank. Talk later."
It was the first lie I ever told her.
The clerk at the counter wore a lanyard with a cartoon cat on it.
I gave her my full name and Reed's.
She typed, frowned, and typed again.
"I'm not finding a marriage license for an Ivy Tolbert," she said. "Do you want me to search under the groom instead?"
"Please."
She clicked twice.
The printer under the counter groaned and pushed out a single sheet.
She read it before she handed it to me, and then she did not hand it to me right away.
"It's eight dollars for a copy," she said.
I paid her eight dollars.
Reed Allen Lathrop, age twenty-nine at the time of filing.
Married six years ago this September, in the Westbridge County Courthouse, on the third floor.
Spouse: Dorsey, Alyssa Marie.
I read it three times.
Then I read it a fourth time, because my brain had put a hand over my eyes and I needed it to stop.
Six years ago.
That was almost a year before I ever met Reed Lathrop.
That was almost a year before Alyssa introduced us at a Fourth of July cookout and said, "Ivy, you have to meet this guy, he builds porches."
I stood by the counter with the page in my hand.
My phone buzzed again.
Reed, this time.
"Babe? Did you sign yet? She said they'd call me if you didn't."
I looked at it for a long time.
Then I wrote back, "Bank needs one more thing. I'll finish it this week."
I pressed send.
I did not cry in the basement, and I did not call Alyssa, and I did not go home.
So I folded the page in half and carried it out into the rain.
The courthouse steps were wide and slick and nearly empty.
I stopped under the stone overhang to get my umbrella out of my bag, and found I had left it in the car.
A black umbrella opened over my head.
A man had come up beside me without a sound.
He was tall, in a long charcoal coat, with dark hair going grey at the temples, and he was not looking at me.
He was looking at the paper in my hand.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I read it over your shoulder. That name."
His voice was very level, the voice of someone who had practiced not shaking.
"Alyssa Dorsey," he said. "Where did you get it?"
"Who are you?"
"My name is Anson Boylston," he said. "Alyssa Dorsey is my wife."
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