Why doesn’t he have any tattoos in this one?
To the naked eye, this Arizona man looks exactly like Michael but not to me. The differences are subtle, but I know my husband. (Well, I thought I did.) This license is either a terribly bad photo-shop job, or this man has an identical twin brother who doesn’t share his appreciation for tattoos.
It takes me all of five minutes to realize it’s the latter.
One of the manila folders is full of pictures of the two of them. They’re faded pictures from the past—long before we’d ever met, long before he lied and said he didn’t have any family to invite to our wedding.
My heart aches as I stare at a picture of his tattooed hand giving his brother a high five on what appears to be a college campus. I make it through about twenty of their brotherly pictures and decide I’ve had enough.
He lied straight to my face…
I continue opening folder after folder, finding myself face to face with even more confusion. There are passports for damn near a hundred countries, with the colored currency to match. There are birth certificates for at least twenty different people, and just as I’m committing a few of the names to memory, a blank passport booklet falls to the floor.
This one doesn’t belong to him or his brother, though.
It belongs to me.
The photo has been edited to make my hair blonde instead of dark brown, and my name isn’t printed at all.
I tuck it into my swim shorts, making a mental note to search for “passport fraud” on my limited YouTube app.
My watch now reads midnight, and there’s plenty more manila folders and envelopes to rummage through, but I have to stop in thirty minutes. Not because I think I shouldn’t be in here in search of the truth, but because my heart can only take so much in a day.
There are several sheets of paper with handwritten notes. Random dates and times, but it’s nothing concrete.
7:10 arrives at work
7:25 checks email; inbox empty
7:35 calls Gchats for an hourHilton rendezvous planned for the evening
8:52 calls H; sends flowers
Sighing, I return everything to its place and push the drawer shut.
The track rattles and the drawer refuses to go back into place. I try again, but it’s no use. Something is stuck at the back of the cabinet.
Stooping down, I stick my hands inside and feel around—catching the snag of a crumpled sheet of paper. Slowly pulling it out, I unravel it, and see the words I heard on my wedding day. Words I’ve replayed in my mind every damn day.
I love you, Meredith.
I vow to cherish and protect you for the rest of our lives together—however long that may be.
The words hit differently now, though. They’re lies. All lies.
I flip the sheet over and see that there’s an entirely different draft of his words.
Meredith,
I wish we’d met under different circumstances.
I wish I didn’t have to do this to you, but I have to.
It’ll all make sense in the end.
—M
My mind spins and my chest aches so badly, that I feel like I’m on the verge of having a heart attack.
Folding his vows, I tuck them into the pages of my fake, unfinished passport and slam the file cabinet shut.
Taking one last look at the criminal warehouse, I hit the lights and walk away from the closet.
When I open the door to his bedroom, I gasp at the sight of Michael standing right in front of me.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” He glares at me.
“I wasn’t looking for anything,” I say, “I was just browsing around.”
“I don’t browse your room without permission.” He steps closer, his eyes on mine. “I could’ve sworn that we agreed that you would never go into mine.”
“I never agreed to this.” I glare right back at him. “And I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but we’re not exactly on the best of terms.”
“We could start to be on better ones, if you finally give me a thank you.”
“Thank you for kidnapping me,” I say. “I’m not sure where in the world I would be, or the type of amazing life I could possibly be living, if you hadn’t done that. Thank you so much.”
He ignores my sarcasm and hands me a small black shopping bag. “You’re fucking welcome.”
I peer inside and notice that there’s a new journal and a new John Grisham novel. I don’t say, ‘Thank you.’
“You can get the hell out of my room now,” he says, in a tone that’s far harsher than anything he’s ever said to me.
I nod and move past him, heading down the hallway to my room.
“Oh, and Meredith?” His voice makes me look over my shoulder.
“Yes?”
“Stay the fuck out of my closet.”
Meredith
Now
Later that night
The last thing I want to do is lay in bed, thinking about everything I found in his closet today. I need time to process it all, time to calmly go over the facts and see if there’s anything I’m missing.
Digging through the luggage from our honeymoon, I pull out my vibrator, even though it’s on its last leg. I’m not sure why I even brought it along on our honeymoon, but given the turn of events, I’m grateful that I tucked it into my luggage.
It’s been my go-to whenever my own hands won’t get the job done, whenever old memories of Michael fucking me invade my brain, and I need to feel something more intense.
Crawling into bed with it, I pick up my phone and open the kindle app. I open an erotic romance and swipe straight to the sex scenes. As I’m approaching the best part—the moment when the hero pounds into the heroine’s pussy relentlessly, a loud and tortured cry breaks out from right outside my window.
Concerned, I set down the kindle and walk over to my bay window. I expect to see a deer caught in a trap below, but there’s nothing. The grass is as still as the trees, the estate’s lake waters are calm and motionless in the moonlight.
I start to return to bed, but the tortured sound cuts through the air once more. It’s far more pained this time, so much so, that I can feel the hurt in my chest. It sounds like it’s coming from the left side of the house, where the only other bay windows are. Michael’s room.
I know that I should ignore the sound, let him suffer from whatever is happening, but I can’t. The broken pieces of my heart still beat for him, and they’re still longing for him to stitch them back together with a thread that will sew everything into perfect sense.
I leave my bedroom and walk down to his door, easily entering the new code on his keypad. The moment I step inside, I freeze at the sight of him writhing violently on the bed.
Wearing only his briefs and a gold necklace that bears his initials, he’s sweating under the cold air and all the spinning ceiling fans. He’s struggling to breathe properly, twisting and turning like he’s having a grand mal seizure.
Finally forcing my feet to move toward him, I move on top of him and shake his shoulders.
“Michael, wake up.” I shake him a bit harder. “Michael, stop. Wake up.”