Chapter 1
"Congratulations, Mr. Carter," I said.
I stood at the hotel entrance, looking at the red balloons in the lobby.
"Happy wedding," I said.
I put the wreath on the ground.
White lily, black mourning ribbons.
On the ribbon, it said: [David Carter, rest in peace.]
The bride screamed.
David's face turned pale.
I smiled and pulled out my phone. "Don't worry, the police are on their way," I said.
Bigamy was punishable by up to two years in prison.
And our marriage license was still valid.
*****
Three days earlier, I was packing David Carter's suitcase.
He had said he was going to Riverside City on business for a week.
I pulled out one of his suits and shook it out to fold it.
Something stiff caught my fingers in the pocket, and it was a card.
It was a hotel booking confirmation.
The city on it was not Riverside. It was Lakeview.
The date was three days out.
I kept going through the bag.
There was a photo in a shirt pocket.
I picked it up and looked.
The blood went straight to my head.
There were two people in it.
David Carter, and a woman I had never seen.
He was in a suit and she was in a wedding gown.
Behind them was the city hall's office.
I turned the photo over.
There was a line on the back: [March 15, 2024. Lakeview.]
That was this year.
We had been married eight years.
We had never divorced.
I took a deep breath.
I put the photo back exactly where I had found it.
I zipped the suitcase shut.
David came out of the bathroom.
"All set?" he asked.
"Yeah," I replied.
I looked at his face.
He was thirty-five, with a broad face, heavy brows, and big eyes.
Back then, it was that trustworthy face that made me fall for him.
"Honey, this business trip might take a bit longer," he said.
His voice sounded perfectly normal.
"How long?" I asked.
"About a week. The project's a bit complicated," he replied.
He picked up the suitcase.
He walked to the door, then turned back to look at me.
"Take care of Sarah," he said.
Sarah was our daughter, and she was six.
"I will."
He left.
The second the door closed, I got out my phone.
I pulled up his location.
Yes, I had put a tracker on him a long time ago.
Last year, he started going on business trips all the time.
So I installed it.
At the time it was only that something felt wrong.
Looking back on it, a woman's instinct was rarely wrong.
The tracker showed him on his way to the airport.
I sprang into action.
I opened my laptop and logged into the bank account.
I knew the password to David's payroll account.
He never bothered to change it in all eight years we were married.
The transaction history popped up.
I scrolled through it, line by line.
March 15, 2024. Transfer to Emily Warren. Seventeen thousand dollars.
Memo wrote wedding expenses.
My hands were shaking.
I kept scrolling, line after line, barely breathing.
January 2024, ten thousand dollars to Emily Warren.
December 2023, ten thousand dollars.
November 2023, ten thousand dollars.
And on and on, month after month.
I scrolled all the way back to the first one.
It started in June 2021.
Ten thousand dollars every month.
Three years.
That came to 360 thousand dollars.
David's salary was 8,300 dollars a month.
Mine was 5,000 dollars a month.
Our mortgage was 4,000 dollars a month.
Our daughter's tuition was 1,700 dollars a month.
I covered everything else.
He always said he couldn't save a dime.
So that was where the money had been going.
I snapped screenshots as evidence.
Then I kept digging.
I checked his payment apps.
There was another 70 thousand dollars in transfers.
Altogether it came to more than 430 thousand dollars.
Eight years of marriage.
I put in 1,700 dollars a month for the household.
He put ten thousand dollars a month into another woman.
I laughed until the tears came. Then I wiped my face and went back to work. I found an account under the name Emily Warren.
She was on David's contact list.
He had saved her as Riverside Client.
I opened her profile.
They were only some posts.
The most recent one was the photo from a wedding shoot.
Emily: [I finally found you. Here's to the rest of our lives.]
It was located at a bridal photography studio in Lakeview.
I put the phone down on the table hard.
I breathed.
I told myself to stay calm.
It was not the time to cry.
I picked up the phone and called my cousin, Diane Hills.
Diane was a lawyer.
I said, "Diane, I need you."
"What's up?" she asked.
"My husband committed bigamy."
There were three seconds of silence on her end.
"Are you sure?" she asked.
"I have a photo. It was taken at the city hall's office."
"All right. Don't touch anything. I'm coming over."
Twenty minutes later, Diane was at my door.
She went through everything I had gathered.
Then she looked up at me.
"Rachel, what do you want out of this?"
"I want him to go to jail," I said.
Diane nodded.
"Bigamy carries up to two years. But there's a problem."
She paused.
"You need more than this. That photo proves they took wedding pictures. It doesn't prove they filed anything."
"How do I get the license?"
"You'd have to request it from the city hall, and you're not a party to it, so they won't release it."
I thought about it.
"Her name is Emily Warren."
"Do you have her identification number?" Diane asked.
"No."
She frowned.
"All right. I have a friend in the sheriff's office. I'll have him run her."
"Okay," I replied.
She made a call.
When she hung up, she looked at me.
"There's one more thing you need to brace yourself for," she said.
"What?" I asked.
"Go through everything the two of you own. The house, the car, the accounts. If he really did this, splitting all of it is going to get complicated."
I was stunned for a second.
The house.
The house was registered under David's name.
The down payment had been 170 thousand dollars. I put in 100 thousand, and he put in 70 thousand.
He said his name alone would make the loan easier.
I agreed to it.
Looking back, I had been a fool.
"And one more thing," Diane said. "Don't tip him off. Let him think everything is normal."
"I know," I replied.
I looked out the window.
It was already dark.
David's tracker showed he was in Lakeview.
So the trip to Riverside City had been a lie.
The hotel booking I had found was dated three days out.
In three days, he was getting married.
To someone else.
A memory suddenly surfaced in my mind.
Last year, during the Christmas holiday.
David said work needed him and went back on the third day of the holiday.
I took our daughter, Sarah, to my parents' place.
On the fifth day, David's mother, Margaret Carter, called me.
She said, "David told me the two of you went to the coast for the holiday?"
Something had felt off right then.
But I said nothing about it.
I only answered, "We did. His company arranged it."
I didn't want to air anything in front of her.
Looking back at it now, he had never worked a day of that holiday.
He went to Lakeview.
He had spent it with her.
And I had sat at my parents' place waiting for his call like an idiot.
My phone rang.
It was David.
I picked up.
"Honey, I made it to Riverside. The hotel's nice. Don't worry about me."
He sounded so tender.
"All right. Get some rest."
I hung up.
I looked at the location on my screen.
He was in Lakeview.
I laughed.