I Lost to My Husband's Ex Twelve Times—Then Found Out His Coin Had No Heads novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Certificate

Neil admits the wedding was never filed and Danica throws her a five-dollar bus fare, then Hazel finds her mother's bill is four months overdue.

I went back into the bedroom and dragged the keepsake box out from the bottom of the closet.

Under the dried ribbon from my bouquet and a stack of guest cards was the marriage certificate Neil had handed me after the wedding.

We had married at a rented house on a lake, with twelve guests and a man in a gray suit Neil said was the officiant.

Neil had found him, and Neil had done the paperwork.

Afterward he told me everything was taken care of and that all I had to do was enjoy the honeymoon.

I photographed the certificate and sent it to Paula.

She called me back before I had put the lid down.

"The registration number on this doesn't match a single record in the county," she said. "The signature line doesn't check out either. I'll keep digging, but protect your accounts and your papers first."

"I will."

When Neil walked in, I was setting the certificate on the bed.

"What are you looking for?"

"The record of our marriage."

His eyes went to the paper, and he stopped in the doorway.

I had thought I would need Paula to tell me the rest.

I looked at his face and I didn't.

"Even this was fake," I said.

"Hazel, hear me out."

He reached for my arm, and I stepped back.

"When Danica and I divorced, she was in a terrible place," he said. "She said she couldn't go on. I promised her I wouldn't remarry on paper until she was ready to let go."

"So you staged a wedding for me."

"I didn't stage it. The wedding was real. I love you, and I'm the one who lives here with you. We just never finished the paperwork."

"It's been a year, Neil."

My voice was very level. "How long were you going to keep telling me that? Until she felt ready?"

His patience was starting to wear thin, and I could see it.

"Do you have to put it that way?" he said. "You told me yourself you didn't care about being married. You said all you wanted was to live with someone who made you feel safe."

I had said that.

I had told him in his car, two years ago, after my third date with him, in the dark with the heater ticking.

I had told him about my father, who used to drink and break the kitchen chairs and put my mother in the hospital with a split skull when I was nine.

I had told him my mother lived with it for the rest of her life.

Neil had listened to all of it and said he would never be that man.

Now he was handing my own fear back to me, and calling it proof that the lie shouldn't matter.

"You know I didn't mean it like that," he said, and lowered his voice. "Our life together isn't fake. Is a piece of paper really more important than that?"

I folded the certificate and put it in my bag.

"Give me back what I earned. I'm going to see my mother."

Danica was standing in the bedroom doorway.

She laughed at me, kindly.

"There it is. After all that, it's about money again. Her mother is perfectly fine where she is, Neil. Can't you see she's using this to squeeze you?"

Neil rubbed his forehead and took out his phone.

"Hazel. If you need bus fare, I'll cover it. Just stop arguing about everything else."

He typed in the group chat: "Send Hazel twenty-five. She's going to see her mom."

Danica read it and opened her wallet.

She dropped a five-dollar bill on the bed.

"She can take the bus," she said.

I looked at the five on the quilt.

I picked it up. It was the only part of my own year I could prove I'd been handed.

Then I walked out of the apartment I wasn't on the lease for, and nobody stopped me.

It took ninety minutes on two buses to reach Maple Court, and the whole way I held the coin in my pocket and turned it over with my thumb.

Mom was in her chair by the window with her blanket over her knees.

She saw my face and didn't ask what had happened.

She just held out her hand, and I sat down on the floor beside her chair and put my head against her knee.

The woman from billing found me in the hallway on my way out.

"Ms. Entwistle, I'm glad I caught you," she said. "I've been trying to reach Mr. Gerrard for weeks."

"About what?"

"Your mother's account. Nothing has been paid since the end of June."

"That's four months," I said.

"Yes," she said. "I'm sorry. We were hoping it was a mistake."

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