“Don’t call her that.” Christopher took the paper and stared at it. “I can’t read this, can you make it clearer?”
“Five bucks.”
“Fine.” He threw a twenty at the woman and ended up with four more copies.
“What’s going on Chris?”
“According to this I’m already married, but its bullshit, trust me, I’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“Oh no, this isn’t going to fly. I can’t tolerate this lie you’ve been living. The wedding’s off!” She took her ring off and threw it at him. “And don’t bother coming home tonight. Find your wife and be with her. I can’t believe you’ve been lying to me all these months. What will my friends think, Mother and Father? I will not have you disgrace me like this.” She turned on her heel and walked out, leaving a stunned Christopher in her wake. He looked over at the woman behind the glass and saw her stunned expression.
*****
Back at his office, Christopher sat at his desk dumbfounded. Gobsmacked. He looked up when his friend walked in.
“Hey, are you okay?” Sean asked when he saw his friend’s expression.
“No, the wedding’s off.”
“Did she finally come clean?” He laughed, then stepped back with his hands in the air when Christopher turned his glare onto him.
“Excuse me?”
“Amber has been stepping out on you for weeks. A bunch of us guys went out one weekend, you were working the Brown case, and couldn’t come with us, we saw Amber there with some guy. Sam took pictures with his phone and looked into it. I’ll call him in if you want.”
“Tell me what you know!”
“I know Sam opened an investigation case for her, she’s met with the guy we saw her with whenever you work late.” He walked over to his desk and pulled a file. “Sorry, man.” He laid the file down, and Christopher slowly opened it and saw his fiancée in several very compromising positions with a guy he didn’t know.
He immediately stood and only said, “Thanks, Sean. I’ll be back.”
Thirty minutes later Christopher let himself into his condo and stopped short when he saw Amber’s parents there.
“What are you doing here?” her father demanded. “Haven’t you done enough damage to my little girl? She told you not to return to her apartment.”
Amber walked in then and stopped short. “What are you doing here? I told you not to come home tonight.”
“In case you forgot, this ismyhome. I came here to tell you to pack your shit and get the hell out.”
“How dare you?” She acted outraged. “You’ve been married all this time we’ve been together. You’ve lied to me.”
Christopher laughed, “Now, isn’t that calling the kettle black. Since you won’t listen to me, how about I show you.” He walked over to the kitchen island and spread ten eight-by-ten color photos out on the counter and Amber tried to gather them up, but her parents grabbed several of them before she could.
“You told us you stopped seeing him,” her mother blurted, then slapped her hand over her mouth.
“You knew your daughter was cheating on me?” Christopher demanded. “One hour, you have one hour to get your stuff and get out. And don’t even think of fighting me on this. The condo is inmyname, the utilities are inmyname. Hell, you don’t even pay for anything in this home. No utilities, no groceries, and no mortgage. You’ve been using me while you’ve been fucking someone else behind my back. So, you don’t have a legal leg to stand on.” He paused long enough to see if they would contradict him, and when it looked like Amber would say something he only glared at her. “If you recall, we were going to add your name to the lease when we married, but not before then. That was your idea, not mine. You have no one but yourself to blame for this shit happening now. God, I hate chaos.” He shook his head and stopped short of running his hands through his hair to pull it.
“What’s this about you being married?” her father demanded as Amber and her mother went up to the bedroom.
Christopher grabbed a cup of coffee and sighed. “Not that it’s any of your business, but it was so long ago, and it was bogus. I never thought something like that could become legal. We were both underage. I mean like really, really underage.”
“What happened?”
“Dad was in the service, stationed near Silicon Valley out in California, at the time. I made friends with several people, got to know the kids in the neighborhood. Everyone was always at everyone’s house.”
“What’s so wrong about that? Sounds like a good place to grow up.”
“It was. I was five at the time. There was this cute little girl in the neighborhood. She always ran after her older brother, he was seven. She was three. She was a tomboy through and through, always made mud pies and threw them at us if we didn’t include her in any of our games. She started getting sick, it took almost three months to find out what was wrong.” He sighed and thought back to that little girl. “Leukemia.”
