Chapter 2 - The Man I Married Never Existed
Grace weighed two pounds, eleven ounces.
The first time I saw her, she was surrounded by wires.
A breathing tube covered part of her face.
A knitted pink hat sat too large on her tiny head.
For several seconds I stood outside the NICU incubator unable to move.
Then the nurse pulled a chair beside me.
“You can touch her.”
“I can?”
“One finger against her hand.”
My hands shook.
I pushed my finger through the opening.
Grace’s entire hand wrapped around the tip.
That tiny grip destroyed me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
She moved slightly.
“I should have left him sooner.”
A nurse named Olivia pretended not to hear.
“I kept thinking things would get better.”
Grace’s fingers tightened.
“I promise you something.”
My voice cracked.
“No one will ever make you beg for safety in your own home.”
I stayed beside her until exhaustion forced me back upstairs.
My father was waiting.
So was Rebecca Sloan.
Rebecca had been our family attorney for almost eight years.
At fifty-two, she had the intimidating calm of someone who had watched powerful men destroy themselves under oath and found the experience mildly repetitive.
She kissed my forehead.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“Your mother would have wanted me to see this sooner.”
I looked at her.
“What does Mom have to do with this?”
Rebecca glanced at Dad.
He looked uncomfortable.
Immediately I knew they were hiding something.
“No.”
Dad sighed.
“Megan.”
“No more deciding what I can handle.”
Rebecca pulled a chair closer.
“Then we tell you everything.”
Everything began five years before I met Ryan.
He had applied for an analyst position at a small logistics company called North Harbor Procurement.
That company was indirectly owned by Carter Meridian.
Ryan never put North Harbor on the résumé he showed me.
According to Rebecca, he had worked there for fourteen months.
During those fourteen months, North Harbor lost nearly $600,000 through fraudulent invoices.
The case had never been criminally prosecuted.
“Why?”
I asked.
Dad stared at the floor.
“Because we couldn’t prove who did it.”
“You suspected Ryan?”
“No.”
Rebecca answered.
“We didn’t know his name then.”
My pulse quickened.
“When did you find out?”
“This morning.”
She pushed a photocopied personnel record toward me.
The photograph was Ryan.
Younger.
Longer hair.
Same blue eyes.
Same smile.
Except the name underneath was not Ryan Bennett.
It read:
RYAN PARKER.
I looked up.
“That’s not possible.”
Rebecca said nothing.
“His middle name is Parker.”
“Yes.”
“So he used his middle name as a last name?”
“Apparently.”
“Why?”
“That is what we intend to find out.”
Dad walked toward the window.
“There’s something else.”
I almost laughed.
Those words were becoming unbearable.
Rebecca opened another folder.
“North Harbor had an administrative coordinator.”
She turned the page.
Jessica Hale.
Her employee photograph looked younger too.
But there was no mistaking her.
Red lipstick.
Blonde hair.
The same cold eyes.
I stared at the page.
“They knew each other.”
“Five years before your marriage,” Rebecca said.
My stomach turned.
Ryan had told me he met Jessica eleven months ago.
At a charity event.
He said she worked in marketing.
He said it meant nothing.
Every sentence had been a lie.
“How did Ryan meet me?”
Dad closed his eyes.
I already knew I wasn’t going to like the answer.
“At a Carter Meridian gala.”
“Yes.”
“Who invited him?”
Silence.
“Dad.”
“One of our executives.”
“Who?”
“Victor Lang.”
The name landed differently.
Victor had worked for my father for seventeen years.
Chief financial officer.
Family friend.
The man who gave the toast at my wedding.
The man who sent Grace a silver rattle when I announced my pregnancy.
“Victor?”
Dad nodded.
“He told us Ryan was an investment consultant.”
“But he wasn’t.”
“We believed he was.”
Rebecca leaned forward.
“Megan, right now we don’t know whether Victor knew about Ryan’s history.”
“He introduced us.”
“Yes.”
“And Ryan already knew Jessica.”
“Yes.”
“And Jessica worked at a company where money disappeared.”
“Yes.”
I looked at my father.
“Did Mom know?”
His face changed.
That was my answer.
“What did she know?”
Dad walked to the window.
“Your mother never trusted Ryan.”
I remembered.
Evelyn Carter had been polite to him.
Never warm.
Three months before our wedding, she had taken me shopping and casually asked whether I was absolutely certain.
I became angry.
I accused her of judging him because he didn’t come from our world.
She never raised the subject again.
Eight months after my wedding, she died when her SUV went through a guardrail on a mountain road.
The police called it driver error.
My father had never been the same.
“What did she know?”
I asked again.
Rebecca spoke quietly.
“Your mother asked me to investigate Ryan.”
I stared at her.
“When?”
“Six weeks before she died.”
My throat closed.
“And you never told me?”
“She withdrew the request.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know.”
Dad turned.
“She told me she had made a mistake.”
“Did she?”
He didn’t answer.
“Dad.”
“I don’t know.”
I stood too quickly.
Pain ripped through my abdomen.
Rebecca caught my arm.
“Sit down.”
“No.”
“Megan.”
“My mother investigated my husband and died six weeks later, and neither of you thought I should know?”
“We had no evidence the two things were connected.”
“You had no evidence because you stopped looking.”
Dad’s face crumpled.
I had almost never seen him look old.
He looked old now.
“You had just married him.”
“That was exactly when I needed to know.”
“I had just lost your mother.”
“And I lost her too.”
Silence.
The anger vanished almost as fast as it came.
What remained was worse.
Fear.
“What did she find?”
Rebecca hesitated.
“Very little survived.”
“What does that mean?”
“Your mother kept notes in a private office at the lake house.”
I knew the room.
After she died, Dad locked it.
“We went through the office after the funeral,” Rebecca said. “Most of the files were ordinary.”
“Most?”
“One folder was missing.”
“What folder?”
“We don’t know.”
Dad finally looked at me.
“But two days before her accident, your mother called me.”
My breathing slowed.
“What did she say?”
“She said, ‘I was right about him.’”
The room seemed to tilt.
“About Ryan?”
“She didn’t say his name.”
“But you assumed.”
“Yes.”
“What else?”
Rebecca’s voice dropped.
“She told me that if anything happened to her, I should look at the money.”
A knock interrupted us.
Detective Bennett entered.
The moment she saw our faces, she stopped.
“I can come back.”
“No.”
I sat again.
“Tell me.”
She closed the door.
“We interviewed Ryan.”
Dad’s expression hardened.
“And?”
“He says the deed was your idea.”
I laughed.
“He says you became increasingly irrational during pregnancy and asked him to handle your finances.”
“Of course.”
“He also claims the medication was prescribed overseas.”
“I haven’t left the country in fourteen months.”
“We know.”
“What about Jessica?”
“She says Ryan told her you were divorcing.”
“While she had her heel against my stomach?”
The detective’s face tightened.
“She is asking for an attorney.”
“Good.”
Detective Bennett looked toward Rebecca.
“There’s something you should all see.”
She placed a clear evidence bag on the table.
Inside was a small silver key.
“We found this sewn into the lining of one of Ryan’s jackets.”
I frowned.
“So?”
“There was a tag attached.”
She turned the bag over.
Three words were written in faded blue ink.
EVELYN – LAKE OFFICE.
My mother’s name.
The room became completely silent.
Dad stepped forward.
“That cannot be hers.”
“Do you recognize it?”
He stared at the key.
“Yes.”
My heart began pounding.
“What does it open?”
Dad’s face had lost all color.
“There was a steel cabinet behind the bookcase in Evelyn’s office.”
Rebecca stood.
“You told me it was empty.”
“It was.”
“When?”
Dad looked at her.
“When I opened it after the funeral.”
I stared at the key in the detective’s hand.
Ryan had carried a key to my dead mother’s private cabinet.
A cabinet nobody had told him existed.
The affair was no longer a betrayal inside my marriage.
May you like
It was connected to my mother.
And for the first time since her death, I wondered whether Evelyn Carter’s car had gone through that guardrail by accident at all.
