Not His Wife novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: In Front of Everyone

I set the pen down on the folder.

The clapping thinned and stopped.

"Ivy," Reed said, through his teeth, still smiling. "Sign it, babe."

"I can't sign that page."

"Sure you can."

"The bank won't let me. I'm not his spouse."

I reached past him and took the microphone off the podium.

The speaker above my head gave a small screech, and two hundred faces turned up toward me.

I had never spoken to more than six people at once in my life.

My knees felt like water, and my voice came out perfectly steady.

"Good evening," I said. "I'm Ivy Tolbert."

"It's Lathrop," Reed hissed.

"It's Tolbert. I never changed it. I'd like to explain why that turned out to be lucky."

At the back of the ballroom, a kid in headphones behind the light board looked at my aunt.

Bernice raised her navy hat one inch off her head.

The kid nodded.

I had not known until that moment she'd fed him pound cake for an hour.

The video of Reed and his trophy vanished from the big screen.

In its place, enormous and slightly blurred, came a county record.

"Last Monday I went to First Westbridge Bank to sign my husband's loan," I said. "The officer told me the county had no marriage for me."

Someone at a front table laughed uncertainly.

"I got a copy," I said. "It cost eight dollars. I'll read it."

I read it off the paper in my hand.

"Lathrop, Reed Allen. Married September twelfth, six years ago, at the Westbridge County Courthouse. Spouse of record, Dorsey, Alyssa Marie."

The room did not make any sound at all.

On the screen, Alyssa's name sat in black type a yard high.

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