Chapter 2
“We’re married.”
Marcus said it so quietly that I almost thought I had misheard.
I looked at my mother.
She sank onto the sofa.
“What?”
“We got married,” he repeated. “Eighteen days ago.”
I counted backward without meaning to. Eighteen days earlier, I had stayed awake until two in the morning helping him rewrite a proposal over video call.
He told me he was stressed about the business.
I told him I loved him.
“You married my mother.”
Mom covered her face.
“We were going to tell you when you came home.”
“I’m home.”
“I know.”
I put the pregnancy test down carefully. I didn’t trust myself to hold it anymore.
Marcus moved toward the island.
“I understand you’re hurt.”
“Stop there.”
He stopped.
I took my phone from my bag and opened the picture he had sent me that morning. It showed him at a desk with his laptop, wearing the blue shirt I had packed into his suitcase before I left.
His message beneath it read: Counting the hours until you’re back, baby.
I held the screen toward him.
“Your wife knew about this?”
He looked at Mom.
She gave a small nod.
I felt sick.
“She knew you were still telling me you loved me.”
Marcus’s face tightened.
“I didn’t know how to end it while you were away.”
“You found a way to get married.”
Mom stood again.
“Nia, I understand how terrible this looks.”
“How does it look to you?”
She had no answer.
I picked up my bag.
“I’m leaving.”
Marcus stepped into my path.
“Please. We need to talk about the practical things.”
I looked at him.
“What practical things?”
“Our apartment. The company. There are commitments.”
He had been operations manager at my event company for two years. I had hired him after he lost a job and told me he wanted to build something with me.
I owned the business. He handled suppliers and some payments because I trusted him.
Now he was mentioning it before I had even left my mother’s house.
“Send anything about work to my business email,” I said.
“Nia, don’t make decisions while you’re upset.”
“Move.”
He hesitated.
Mom came closer.
“You can stay here tonight. We’ll sort this out.”
“With you and your husband?”
Her face crumpled.
I walked around Marcus and opened the front door. Neither of them followed me onto the porch.
The pastries were still on the passenger seat.
I sat in the car and stared at the box until my phone rang.
Marcus.
I rejected the call.
Mom called next.
I rejected that one too.
Then I called Aunt Vivian.
She answered on the second ring.
“Baby? I thought you weren’t back until Friday.”
“I came early.”
She heard something in my voice.
“What happened?”
I tried to explain, but the first sentence broke into sobs. I had spent the whole confrontation standing up. Alone in the car, I couldn’t hold myself together.
“Tell me where you are,” Vivian said.
I gave her the address.
“Stay there. I’m coming.”
I was twenty-six years old. I ran a company with eleven employees. I had negotiated leases and carried entire weddings through power failures.
I still waited for my aunt like a frightened girl.
She arrived twenty minutes later and opened my door.
“Come with me.”
I handed her my keys.
She drove my car while I sat beside her. A neighbor drove hers back. Vivian didn’t ask questions until we were safely inside her apartment.
Then she made tea and sat across from me.
I told her everything.
When I reached the marriage, her hand stopped halfway to her cup.
“Denise married him?”
“Yes.”
Vivian was Mom’s older sister. They had argued over clothes and money and whose turn it was to call Grandma, but I had never seen her look at a story about Mom this way.
“Did she say why she kept it from you?”
“She said she was lonely.”
Vivian looked down.
“That doesn’t explain what she did.”
I nodded, tears running into my tea.
My phone kept lighting up. I switched it off.
Vivian found clean clothes for me. I changed out of my denim shorts and crop top because they suddenly felt like part of a person I no longer knew how to be.
When I returned to the living room, she had made up the sofa.
“You can stay as long as you need.”
“I have to go to the apartment tomorrow.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“And I need to check the company.”
“We’ll do one thing at a time.”
I lay down but didn’t sleep. Around four, I turned on my phone to check my work messages.
There were two payment notifications from the business account.
One was for a supplier deposit I recognized.
The other was for seventy-five thousand dollars sent to a company I had never heard of.
The payment had been approved in my name.
I sat up.
Vivian heard me and came from her bedroom.
“What is it?”
I showed her.
May you like
The transfer had happened three days earlier.
Three days after Marcus and my mother returned from their honeymoon.
