The words left my mouth before I realized I was reading aloud.
The lawyer flinched.
“Keep reading,” he murmured.
Evelyn, I know you’ll think marrying him honors me. It doesn’t. It erases you.
Something deep inside me splintered.
I covered my mouth with one hand and continued.
Michael always leaned too heavily on whoever loved him.
He wanted caretakers, not partners. He is drowning in debts I only discovered at the end, and he will look for the softest place to land.
That place will be you, because you look like me and because you are lonely.
There are three envelopes beneath this note.
Bank statements. A second mortgage he took out without telling me. A letter from a man he owes more money than our house is worth.
If he has already married you, then everything I feared has come true, and I am so, so sorry I could not warn you sooner.
My throat tightened until I could hardly breathe.
The attorney rested his folded hands on the tabletop.
“I begged her to tell you directly,” he said quietly. “She refused.”
“She said the only way you would believe it was if he proved her right himself.”
I picked up the first bank record.
Then another.
Then a collection letter bearing Michael’s name in bold type, followed by an amount that made my stomach twist.
“He’s been telling everyone he inherited money from his aunt,” I whispered.
“There was no aunt.”
I shut my eyes.
Two years of Sunday visits.
Two years spent believing that, slowly, he had fallen in love with the person I truly was.
In reality, he had been observing me.
Testing me.
Waiting to learn whether I was soft enough to carry him.
“What do I do?” I asked.
The lawyer rose and picked up his hat.
“That’s not for me to say. But your sister put her final hope in you. She believed you were stronger than you knew.”
He stopped before leaving.
“She said, and I quote, ‘Evelyn will do the right thing. She just needs to see him with her own eyes.’”
Then he walked away.
I stared down at the financial papers resting across my knees.
The man I had married days earlier had never loved me.
He had only been searching for a substitute.
I concealed the wooden box just as Michael’s key entered the lock.
