Lacey Burcham.
For a second, I honestly thought my eyes had stopped working.
I blinked.
Then I read it again.
Bride: Lacey Marie Burcham.
The woman Jeremy had been dating before me.
The woman I had taken him from twenty-two years ago.
The woman I had seen pushing ginger ale through Kroger with a scarf wrapped around her head.
My knees finally decided they weren’t as strong as I’d bragged they were.
Bonnie caught my elbow.
“Bench,” she said quietly.
This time I didn’t argue.
I sat down with that marriage license shaking in both hands.
The date was three years ago.
A Tuesday.
Of course it was a Tuesday.
I remembered that particular Tuesday because Jeremy had come home after midnight.
He’d smelled like hospital soap.
I asked what happened with his buddy’s wife, and he told me she’d had surgery.
Then he kissed my forehead and said, “Nothing for you to worry about, Jill-girl.”
Nothing for me to worry about.
I stared at Lacey’s signature until the letters blurred.
“How can he marry somebody else if he’s already married to me?” I asked.
Bonnie sat beside me, but she didn’t touch the paper.
“I can’t give legal advice,” she said carefully. “But somebody at that time represented to this office that he was legally able to marry.”
“Somebody?”
She looked at me.
“You need a lawyer.”
I almost laughed.
A lawyer.
I was probably unemployed as of that morning.
I had fourteen dollars left until payday.
And apparently my husband had another wife.
“Was there anything else filed with this?” I asked.
Bonnie hesitated.
Then she stood.
“I can look at the index.”
She disappeared behind the back wall.
I sat there thinking about all the Tuesdays.
Three years of them.
More than a hundred Tuesdays.
Every one of them I’d warmed Jeremy a plate.
Every one of them I’d believed he was working.
Every one of them he had been driving to Nashville.
To Lacey.
My phone buzzed.
Jeremy.
You get the tags?
I stared at the message.
Then another came.
Jill-girl?
I turned the phone face down.
Bonnie came back carrying a yellow sticky note.
“There was an accompanying affidavit,” she said.
“What kind?”
“I really think you should talk to an attorney.”
“Bonnie.”
Something in my voice made her sit back down.
“What kind of affidavit?”
She lowered her voice.
“An affidavit declaring prior marriage status.”
My stomach turned.
“What did he declare?”
She looked miserable.
“That his previous marriage had ended.”
I stopped breathing.
“Ended how?”
Bonnie didn’t answer right away.
Then she said, “According to the record, by death.”
I stared at her.
She stared back.
I actually looked over my shoulder because some ridiculous part of me expected another woman named Jill Tolley to be sitting behind me.
“I’m not dead.”
“No, honey.”
“I’m sitting right here.”
“I know.”
“He told the county I was dead?”
“I don’t know what he personally said. I’m telling you what the filing indicates.”
I stood so fast the papers slid off my lap.
Bonnie grabbed them before they hit the floor.
My phone started ringing.
Jeremy.
I declined it.
It rang again.
Declined.
Then a text.
Call me. Something’s wrong.
I nearly threw the phone across the courthouse.
Something’s wrong.
I walked outside into sunlight so bright it hurt.
I sat in my car and spread every document across the passenger seat.
His tag receipt.
Our marriage license.
Their marriage license.
My supposed death.
The whole thing looked like somebody else’s life.
Then I noticed the address.
Lacey’s address on the marriage record wasn’t Nashville.
It was thirty-eight minutes from my house.
A little town north of us.
I knew the road.
I had driven past it dozens of times.
My phone rang again.
This time I answered.
“Hey,” Jeremy said immediately. “Finally. You okay?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Jill?”
I looked at his second marriage license.
“Where are you?”
“At work.”
“Roofing?”
There was a pause.
Too small for most people to notice.
Not too small anymore.
“Yeah.”
“Send me a picture.”
“What?”
“A picture. Of you on the roof.”
Another pause.
Then he laughed.
“What’s gotten into you?”
“Send me a picture, Jeremy.”
“Jill, I’m working.”
“I know.”
My voice sounded strangely calm.
“That’s why it should be easy.”
He went silent.
Then he said, “Did somebody say something to you?”
There it was.
Not What happened?
Not Are you okay?
Did somebody say something to you?
I closed my eyes.
“Should they have?”
“Jill.”
“What?”
“Go home.”
That scared me more than anything.
Not anger.
Not denial.
Go home.
“Why?”
“I’ll explain when I get there.”
“Explain what?”
He hung up.
I stared at the phone.
Then another message appeared.
From my son, Caleb.
Mom, Dad just called me. What’s going on?
My hands started shaking again.
Jeremy had called our son before he’d called me back.
Why?
I started the car.
I should have gone straight home.
I should have called a lawyer.
I should have done a hundred sensible things.
Instead, I typed Lacey’s address into my GPS.
Thirty-eight minutes.
I drove there with the marriage license on the passenger seat and Jeremy calling me seven times.
I didn’t answer once.
The road narrowed outside town.
Small houses.
Mailboxes.
A church.
Then the GPS told me to turn left.
The house was a little white ranch with blue shutters.
There was a wind chime on the porch.
A flower bed somebody had tried hard to keep alive.
And parked in the driveway was Jeremy’s roofing truck.
I pulled over across the road.
For nearly five minutes, I couldn’t make myself move.
Then the front door opened.
Jeremy came outside.
Not wearing work clothes.
He was in jeans and a gray T-shirt.
Behind him stood Lacey.
She was thinner than she’d been at Kroger.
Her scarf was gone.
Her hair was growing back in soft little curls.
Jeremy turned toward my car.
He saw me.
His whole body froze.
Lacey followed his eyes.
And when she saw me, she covered her mouth.
I got out.
Jeremy came down the steps quickly.
“Jill, listen to me.”
I held up the certified marriage license.
His face went white.
“You married her.”
He stopped.
“Jill—”
“You told the county I was dead.”
Lacey’s head snapped toward him.
“What?”
That was the moment everything changed.
Because Lacey wasn’t looking guilty.
She was looking shocked.
She looked at Jeremy.
Then at me.
Then back at the man standing between us.
“You told me she died,” Lacey whispered.
Jeremy didn’t answer.
My anger disappeared so fast it left something colder behind.
Lacey came slowly down the porch steps.
“He told me you died in a car accident,” she said.
I looked at Jeremy.
He looked like he wanted the ground to open.
“When?” I asked.
“Three years ago.”
“The same year you married him?”
Her eyes filled.
“Yes.”
I held up my left hand.
My wedding ring caught the sunlight.
“Well,” I said. “I’m not dead.”
Lacey started crying.
Jeremy stepped toward us.
“Both of you need to calm down.”
I turned on him.
“Both of us?”
“Jill, please.”
“No. You don’t get to say please.”
Then the front door opened again.
A teenage girl came outside.
Maybe fifteen.
Maybe sixteen.
She had dark hair pulled into a ponytail.
Jeremy’s dark hair.
Jeremy’s eyes.
She looked at him first.
“Dad?”
Every sound in the world seemed to disappear.
I looked at Jeremy.
Then at the girl.
Then at Lacey.
My mouth went dry.
“Dad?” I repeated.
The girl looked confused.
Lacey started shaking her head.
“Emma, go inside.”
But Emma stayed right where she was.
Jeremy rubbed both hands over his face.
And suddenly I understood.
The hospital parking stub.
The insurance.
The Tuesdays.
Lacey’s illness.
The three-year marriage.
But there was still one part I couldn’t understand.
That girl was too old to have been born after their secret wedding.
Far too old.
I looked at Lacey.
“How old is she?”
Lacey’s face crumpled.
“Jill…”
“How old?”
“Sixteen.”
My son was sixteen too.
I turned toward Jeremy.
He couldn’t look at me.
Then Lacey said the sentence that broke open the last twenty years of my marriage.
“Jeremy didn’t start seeing me again three years ago.”
She swallowed hard.
“He never completely stopped.”
And that was when my phone buzzed with a message from Caleb.
Mom, Dad told me not to come home. Why did he say I need to stay at Grandma’s tonight?
I looked from my son’s message to the sixteen-year-old girl standing on Lacey’s porch.
Same age.
Same father.
And for the first time, I realized the second marriage license might not be Jeremy’s biggest secret……….
TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 3…
