Not His Wife novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Man With the Umbrella

Anson tells Ivy how Alyssa left him with his father's money and why he waits at the clerk's office; they agree to seven days with no lies and no touching, and he asks where Reed really goes three nights a week.

I did not answer him on the steps.

I said I was not talking to a stranger in front of a courthouse, and he said that was fair.

He pointed his umbrella at a diner across the street with a flickering OPEN sign.

I went because it was raining, and because it was the only place in the city where I could sit down and nobody would know me.

We took a booth by the window.

He ordered black coffee and did not drink it.

I ordered pie and did not eat it.

"You first," I said.

He took out his phone and slid it across the table.

It was a photo of a marriage certificate.

The state was Ohio, and the date was nine years ago.

Anson Boylston and Alyssa Marie Dorsey.

Under it was a second picture of a girl in a short white dress laughing at the camera, with a honey-blonde bob and big warm eyes.

It was Alyssa at twenty-three.

I knew that laugh.

I had been hearing it across kitchen tables since I was twelve.

"She left five months after the wedding," he said. "She took sixty-one thousand dollars out of my father's estate and she took the car."

"That's a police matter."

"I went to the police. They called it a marital dispute." He turned his cup a quarter turn. "I've been trying to divorce her for three years. The court won't finish it unless she's been served, and nobody can find her."

"But you found a courthouse."

"The county records clerk owes me a favor," he said. "A month ago I asked her to text me if anyone ever pulled Alyssa's name. Today, a little after noon, she did."

"And you were already in Westbridge."

"I come here most Mondays," he said. "I stand around and hope."

I thought about that.

A man had stood outside a basement office for weeks, hoping a stranger would say the name of his wife.

"I pulled her name," I said. "Not on purpose."

I unfolded my printout and laid it on the table between the coffee and the pie.

He read it with his whole body gone still.

"Reed Lathrop," he said. "Six years ago. She was already married to me."

"Then they were never really married."

"Maybe not." He looked up. "Is Reed Lathrop your husband?"

"He's been my husband for four years."

"By what paper?"

I told him about Saint Brigid's, and he listened with his hands flat on the table.

When I got to the part where Alyssa took the license out of the priest's hand, he closed his eyes briefly.

"She held my bouquet," I said. "At the wedding. She pinned my hem."

"She sat in the front row of mine," he said. "She told my mother she'd never wanted anything so much as to be taken care of."

I laughed, and it came out wrong.

He did not look away from it.

"Did you know?" he asked.

"Know what?"

"Did you know she was married to your husband?"

It was the question I had been waiting for, and I was surprised how much it hurt coming from a man I'd known forty minutes.

"No," I said. "Did you know where she was?"

"No."

"Then we're even, and we've both been stupid."

"I'd say fooled," he said.

"Don't make it nicer than it is."

Something in his face loosened a little, almost a smile, and then it was gone.

I looked at the pie.

"Why would he put me on a loan application as his wife?" I said. "He knows he's not married to me. He knows the bank checks."

"Has he done it before?"

I sat very still.

Two years ago he had needed a truck.

I had signed a thirty-eight-thousand-dollar loan at a credit union and the girl at the desk had barely looked at my ID.

Last spring there was a business card, twelve thousand, and a form, and a pen.

"Twice," I said.

"Then he thinks a bank is the same as a credit union," Anson said. "Some men do that. They get away with it twice and decide it's a skill."

"My husband is not that stupid."

"Your husband is married to two women and kept both of them away from a courthouse for six years," he said. "I'd say it's a fair guess."

"What does he want?" he asked. "What's the loan?"

"Two hundred forty thousand."

"Secured by what?"

"My house."

He said nothing.

He did not have to.

"The bank gave Reed seven days," I said. "The approval ends next Monday."

"Then we have seven days," he said.

"We?"

"You have a house and a husband who isn't one. I have a wife I can't find." He folded his hands. "Alyssa is the middle of both. I'd rather we stood on the same side of the table."

"Rules," I said.

"Go on."

"No lies. Not to me, not about anything, not even small."

"Agreed."

"And you don't touch me. I've had enough hands in my business for one day."

"Agreed," he said, very evenly. "Anything else?"

"You pay for the coffee."

He was already reaching for his wallet.

At the door he opened the umbrella over me again, and kept it at arm's length.

"Can I ask one thing?" he said.

"You can ask."

"Does your husband travel for work?"

"Marlow County," I said. "Three nights a week. Decks and porches."

He looked at the grey sky for a moment.

"I drove through Marlow County last spring, looking for her," he said. "It's a feed store and two churches. I didn't see one porch going up."

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