“You married her,” Reese said flatly.
“What if I wasn’t married to her anymore?”
Her eyes remained focused ahead, but I took note of the twitch her face made.
She let a few seconds pass and cleared her throat. “You told me you had to stay with her for two years, that you couldn’t get divorced before then. I’m not waiting for something that willneverhappen.”
I’d expected that. Of course Cassie and I would get divorced. I knew that. But as long as I stayed with her, on paper anyway, Reese wouldn’t trust me. She wouldn’t believe I loved her more, wanted to be with her more. She’d been let down by guys too many times. It was one thing when she thought we were simply dating, that I was Cassie’s guy du jour. But Reese wasn’t going to be the longtime mistress in this scenario, and I couldn’t blame her.
“Cassie and I won’t stay married for the next two years,” I said.
We were leaving town now and I felt a little better, noticing the fields on either side, the emptiness. I couldn’t be too careful. Reese darted a glance at me. She was intrigued. She wouldn’t have agreed to meet if she wasn’t.
“We’re going to fail our interview with immigration,” I continued. “It’ll never work. I’m sure of that now. So that leaves me with two options. I could wait until that happens, risk having the Department of Homeland Security investigate our case further before deciding that I’m a fraud and kick me out of the country…”
I paused and watched her hands grip the steering wheel, the way she held her breath.
“What’s the other option?” she said, after I let the silence settle between us.
Our eyes met for a split second. Hers were full of rage, of confusion. Despair also. Maybe. Hopefully.
It gave me enough courage to continue. “I researched all the immigration laws, the rules, the loopholes. I have to be married to an Americancitizen for at least two years to get a permanent green card so I can live and work here indefinitely. There’s no way around it. If I divorce her now, I have to leave. Even if I married someone else, I’d have to start all over again. That would take time and a lot of money. It would also look suspicious as hell.”
Again I waited, fear pooling at the bottom of my stomach.
“So there’s no other option,” Reese said.
“I’d marry you in a heartbeat,” I said, suddenly realizing how presumptuous it was of me to assume she’d want that. Reese had been on her own one way or another for a long time. She didn’t need anyone. Still, I chose to believe she wanted me.
“This is all about you wanting to stay here,” she said. “In the States, I mean. You could go back to France…” She trailed off again but not before she glanced at me.
“I can’t. I need to stay away. I don’t even want to step foot in the country, not until I’ve sorted myself out.”
There was another reason: I couldn’t stop thinking about the money, which steadily seeped through Cassie’s hands. I saw the shopping bags, the bottles of liquor, the receipts for expensive meals with her friends, the new iPhone. She was talking about buying a new car. She gave me cash every time I said I needed to get supplies for the inn and never asked for the change. If we divorced, I’d get nothing.
I swallowed hard. I hadonecard to play and the time had come. “Thereisanother option. Everything would be different if I were a widower.”
Reese slammed her foot on the brake and the car shrieked to a stop, jerking both of us forward, then backward. I felt the wind knocked out of me. There was no one in front of us. No cars, no animals, no reason she did that. We were just stopped in the middle of an empty road.
Reese turned to me, her eyes wild with shock. “Ifyou were a widower?”
I couldn’t breathe anymore but I had to get the words out. “If Cassie was…not alive, I could keep going with my application as I am now. With Cassie out of the way, I could make our ‘love story’ real. I read the fine print.Immigration laws have a provision for foreign spouses of American citizens after they die. The government doesn’t kick them out of the country just because their loved one passed away before the green card process is complete.”
Reese’s breathing grew ragged, but she said nothing.
So I finished my thought, nailed my own coffin shut. “I’d still be living here legally as her widower. I’d be in mourning. Devastated. I’d stay in the house. We…you and I, we could do everything we’ve been doing, just as quietly. And then—”
Reese wasn’t throwing me out of the car. She wasn’t screaming that I was a psychopath who was proposing murder. In this bizarre and twisted world I now found myself in, there was hope. But also, she wasn’t starting the car again. We were still stuck in the middle, both literally and figuratively.
“We could date openly, not right away, but in a few months. People grieve in strange ways. Things happen. It wouldn’t be so hard to accept that you and I might fall in love.”
A loud honk resonated behind us, and we both turned around to see a huge truck way back in the distance.
Reese put her hand on the ignition, but still didn’t drive off. “I can’t tell if you’re being serious right now. You’re talking about…” She gulped.
I spoke quickly. “I’m talking about being with you. After everything has blown over, we could get married. We’d be happy. Tell me you don’t think you and I could be happy together.”
The honks got louder but Reese was frozen in space.
