This was only an application. Perhaps Mom had been engaged to a previous boyfriend and called things off.
Genevieve slid the application to the side, revealing what lay beneath. A marriage license. And below that, a marriage certificate.
For her mother and Russell Atwell. They’d been married on July 18, 1982. Mom had not called the wedding off. She’d gone through with it.
Mom had never breathed a word of this to her.
This couldn’t be!
... And yet it was. This document proved a wedding had occurred.
Mom would have been twenty-two in 1982. Fresh out of college.
Hermom? Married to a man named Russell?
Did Dad know about this? What if he didn’t? What if he thought he was Mom’s first and only husband?
Genevieve placed a hand over her heart and waited for her body’s clamor to calm.
Down in her soul, she’d known since the moment she’d received the anonymous letter that there was something to be found in her parents’ past. She’d driven to Athens today to chase that very suspicion. Even so, now that she’d uncovered a secret, she didn’t want it to be true. Accepting this meant accepting that her family wasn’t as she’d believed all her life.
At her third-grade Halloween parade, Mom had stood with the other parents, clapping and snapping photos. As Genevieve had walked by in the Mulan costume that she and Mom had worked on for two weeks, her mother had called out, “Go, Mulan! Girl power!” The sleeve of Genevieve’s robe had slipped down to her shoulder as she’d raised her fist in acknowledgment. That costume had been her favorite of all time.
Later, in El Salvador, the curtain around Genevieve’s hospital bed had jerked back and Genevieve had laid eyes on the two people she’d been desperate to see for days. Her mom and dad. Mom had looked so familiar to her in that moment and simultaneously different, too. Smaller, older, thinner. But when Mom had released asob and wrapped Genevieve in a hug, her arms had communicated fierce strength.
Caroline had spent hours moving things into Genevieve’s freshman dorm room at Belmont and arranging the decorations for maximum beauty and charm. When there was nothing left to do and it was time for her to go, Mom had stood in the middle of the room as if suddenly and totally lost. Her arms had dropped to her sides. “Oh, sweetie,” she’d whispered. Tears had tumbled over her eyelashes.
They had such a long history, she and her mom. Genevieve was as accustomed to her mother as she was to anyone on earth. She comprehended her mom’s foibles and virtues. She’d lived with her for the majority of her life and had talked with her at least every other day since moving out. There’d been a million chances for her mom to say,“Hey, by the way, Genevieve. Iwas married once before.”
How could her mother have been another man’s wife?
A lightning bolt carved into her. What if her mom and Russell had had a child?
That possibility was almost too disturbing to consider.
What had happened to Mom’s first marriage? Had she and Russell gotten a divorce? Had Russell died? Or was Mom a ... polygamist? What if she was one of those people on the TV shows who had two families?
Genevieve pulled her phone from her purse and snapped pictures of all the records. Then she walked on quivering legs to the gray-haired woman at the information desk. “Do you happen to have any documents on my mother’s husband, Russell Michael Atwell?”
“I can check. Birth date?”
Genevieve consulted the file and supplied his birth date.
“One moment.” The clerk ran a search. “Yes.” She kindly directed Genevieve back into the vault.
They walked down the rows of long-undisturbed papers thatchronicled the lives of thousands upon thousands of people, many of them gone from this earth.
She needed to call Natasha. She needed to tell Sam.
Sam?How strange that he’d sprung into her mind.
Yet, in this moment when her sense of security regarding her family was careening the way the walls had during the earthquake, he had. Because she knew Sam would be stationary.
He’d offered to travel with her today, but he didn’t finish at The Kitchen until after lunch, right when she hoped to return to Misty River and buckle down on her own day’s work. So she’d come alone.
The gray-haired woman slid Russell’s file from its resting place. Genevieve thanked her and returned to her table. Inside Russell’s file, she discovered the same marriage documents she’d found in her mother’s file. She flicked past them and came to—
A will.
