“You’re married?” Gypsy frowned at Willow.
“No, like I said I have no idea who that man is.” Willow reached for the paper this Christopher guy had thrown on the table, but Scott picked it up first.
“As your lawyer.” He grinned at her, “I’ll look at it first.” He grinned, but he really was a lawyer, just not hers, yet.
They all looked up when Tom and Bill joined them. “He’s gone, but we got a picture of his plate. New York plates. Don’t know if it’s a rental or personal. I’ll need my computer to run it.” He quickly left through the apartment and was back in five minutes. Once he was set up, he ran the plate number and frowned. “Must be his personal plate, because it comes back to a Christopher Evans, in Manhattan, New York.” His finger flew over the keys, and he frowned harder. “Says here he’s the owner of Evans Investigations. A private firm.”
“What do the papers say?” They all watched Scott as he opened them and the first thing he did was pass around the card with Christopher’s contact information. As he began to read, he frowned. He suddenly looked up and demanded, “Willow, how old are you?”
“Twenty-three.”
“According to these papers, you were three when you married that guy. Everything looks legit, but if you allow me to, I’ll look into it further. But first, who’s Angie Perkins and Chris Evans?”
“Angie Perkins is my mother. No clue who Chris Evans is. Why?”
“They’re the witnesses who signed this.” He handed the paper to Willow, and she read it with no clue as to what she was reading.
“I’ll get to the bottom of this. Hold on.” She walked out and was back in minutes. She set up her own laptop and using Skype called her sister.
“Fern.”
“Wanda! Hey, it’s good to see you.”
Willow frowned at her sister, then leaned into the computer. “Cut the shit, Fern. I can see by your expression you know what the hell is going on. Who the hell is Christopher Evans and why does he have a marriage license that says we’ve been married for twenty years.”
“Oh, you met him, huh?”
“Fern,” Willow said firmly, and leaned back and crossed her arms as she glared at her sister.
“Remember, shortly after Easter Sunday, I told you Mom mentioned your wedding anniversary?”
“Vaguely. What’s going on? And how did he find me?”
“He found you using your e-mail address. He’s from New York, he drove all the way to California to our old neighborhood and got information from someone that we’d moved. I was gone with Mom and Dad, and when I came home, he was here.”
“But who the hell is he?”
“You really don’t remember do you?”
“Fern.”
“You had been in the hospital for months.”
“But that was only eight years ago when my kidneys failed, and I had to have a transplant.” She heard several people suck in their breaths and she waved them off.
“No, Sweetie, it wasn’t. We, you, me, Douglas, Mom and Dad. We were all born in California and grew up there. You weren’t quite three when you became sick. I mean really, really sick. It took three months and hundreds of doctor visits to find out what was wrong with you.”
“What was wrong?”
“Sweetie, you had Leukemia. When they realized how bad it was, you had several rounds of chemo and radiation. It didn’t seem to work. You were in the hospital for months, then after a year, they did another round of chemo and radiation. Nothing seemed to work. The doctors told Mom and Dad to get our priest, well, since we aren’t Catholic, we got the pastor from our church that we went to every Sunday, so Dad called Pastor Jones in. I don’t know what the two of you talked about, but suddenly, little Christopher Evans, he was Doug’s best friend then, came to the hospital and proposed to you.
“He actually got down on one knee and did the whole bit. That necklace you have on?” She pointed to Willow through the screen. Willow picked it up and frowned.
“What about it?”
“That’s the quote, unquote, engagement ring and wedding band from that ceremony. Christopher proposed to you and said that he’d plan everything, but you had to stay alive long enough, so your wish of Dad walking you down the aisle on your wedding day cametrue. You were showing very little signs of improvement by then, and two weeks later, after the Easter Sunday service, you and Christopher were married. Mom has all the pictures. Christopher has them too, his own mother took them. After the ceremony, you were admitted back into the hospital, and three weeks later, Christopher disappeared. We didn’t know until he showed up here last week that his father was in the military and had been transferred to Japan. He took his wife and son with him. Oh, and I don’t know if I mentioned this, but Christopher was only five when this occurred.”
Willow stared in shock at the people on the other side of the computer. From their expressions, she could tell they were just as shocked as she was. “But what about when I was thirteen?”
