Shine Not Burn(34)

“Wait … what?” My brain was misfiring, trying to put together her nonsensical words into a sentence that would mean something to me.

The woman sighed loudly. “Don’t play. Seriously, I don’t have time to play lawyer games today, okay? I got fifteen … no sixteen forms to process before I leave for the day, and if I don’t get it done the team leader will be all up in my business, know what I’m sayin’?”

“Yes, I do … but no, I’m not playing. I’m serious. I’ve never been married in my life.” A huge pit opened in my stomach, and that pit was filled with molten lava. This cannot be happening to me. Bradley will totally shit a hamster if there’s a glitch. He’s planned a bachelor’s golf party and everything, with fraternity brothers coming in from all over the world to attend.

“Are you sure you’re not married?” she asked, sounding doubtful.

“Positive,” I said, sincerely irritated with this jerk in the courthouse who obviously hadn’t gone anywhere after high school except maybe to McDonalds’ hamburger university. “Believe me, I’d know if I was married to someone other than my fiancé.”

“You ain’t never been to Nevada?” she asked, an evil-sounding smile in her voice.

My ears burned as memories washed over and threatened to drown me in fear. I almost couldn’t get the word out. I have been to Nevada. Oh f*ck me, I have been to Nevada! “Maybe. Once.”

“When? Any chance it was about two years ago?”

My heart was pounding like a really loud and fast bass drum. I could literally feel the pulse in my neck without even touching it. “Maybe?” My voice was only capable of squeaking at this point. Two years ago. That was Kelly’s bachelorette party! No, this can’t be happening!

“Says here in my system you married a man by the name of … Gavin MacKenzie, on April tenth, two thousand and eleven. The signature matches the one you put on the form, maybe a little more messy, but it’s the same one. That name ring any bells? Gavin MacKenzie? What is that? Scottish?”

My brain and heart both felt like they were going to explode now. My vision went fuzzy and my jaw dropped open as all the blood drained out of my head.

“Ma’am? Are you still there?” she asked, sounding bored and far away.

The phone dropped from my hand and hit the desk. A tiny voice came from down near my blotter. “Ms. Marks? Are you there? Are you okay? Hello? I’m gonna hang up this phone, you know. I don’t have time for these games, I already told you.”

The room started spinning and I blinked my eyes several times, trying to get my vision to come back. But it just kept narrowing down, a long gray tunnel with eventually just a pinprick of light at the end.

That’s the last thing I remembered seeing before I woke up again on the floor with Ruby’s worried face hanging over me.





Chapter Fifteen





THE PLANE TOUCHED DOWN AT lunchtime in Boise, Idaho, the closest airport to Baker City, Oregon. I’d spent a sleepless night yesterday at my apartment. I begged off going with Bradley to the pub after work, telling him I had to attend to an emergency client meeting out of town that I couldn’t put off. Luckily we worked in different departments and he wasn’t privy to all of my client files, otherwise he would have known I was full of crap. I was also fortunate that Ruby had zero issue with hiding things from that Bradley. She’d been almost too delighted to make my plane, hotel, and car rental reservations. The feelings of guilt were turning into an ulcer, eating through me from the inside out.

The memory of Ruby pressing her good luck troll doll into my hand made me smile weakly, easing the pain somewhat. “Take this,” she’d said after I’d sat in my chair like a zombie and tried to explain the huge error I had to go fix out in Oregon of all places. I had less than a week to get an annulment or divorce and fix the license garbage at the courthouse, or I was done. Single once again. Lifeplan in the dust. “It’ll bring you luck,” she assured me. “I had it in my pocket when I met my Michael, God rest his beautiful soul.” She tilted her head back to stare at the ceiling for a few seconds, a contented look on her face.

I didn’t ask her why she had a lumpy, plastic, ridiculous-looking troll doll in her pocket when she met her future husband. It was irrelevant, and I had to save all my energy for relevant facts only. I’d stared down at the thing in my hand, its ridiculous blue and purple hair sticking out in all directions, and almost shut it up in my desk when she turned around. But instead, I threw it into my purse and dragged it along with me on this fool’s errand.

I sighed heavily, looking for the signs that would direct me to the car rental agencies. This had to be a mistake; it just had to be. How could I possibly have married a man in Vegas and not remembered any of it? This stuff doesn’t happen in real life.

Only, it kind of does. It happens often enough that I’ve found myself part of a statistically valid group. I slogged through the airport as I recalled what I’d uncovered, my feet and legs moving through virtual mud or quicksand or something. I was so not motivated to deal with this shit.

After I’d gotten up off the floor of my office and convinced Ruby I didn’t need an ambulance, I’d gone into research mode. No one can conduct discovery like this girl can, no one … especially when I was this focused on finding a loophole. While looking up my alleged husband’s name and vital information provided on the faxed-over marriage certificate, I’d run across several newspaper articles about these twenty-four hour wedding chapels in Las Vegas that catered to the too-drunk-to-remember crowd. One of them was the one I’d been inside. And there was no doubt about it; I had been inside. My signature on the form was real. Yes, it was sloppy. Yes, it was crooked. Yes, it was even smudged. But it was definitely mine.