I don’t know if I’ll actually be able to find anything on there. For all I know, it has spreadsheets or documents or solitaire on it and that’s all. It might even be password protected and completely useless to me.
One thing for sure? I won’t know unless I check.
Before I think better of what I’m doing, I dash over to the door, looking left, looking right, checking to see if anyone is coming. When I see that the coast is clear, I ease the door shut. There. That should give me a few seconds’ warning to get out from behind Loni’s desk.
Slipping behind it, I don’t take the seat. I bend over instead, poking a random key to see if the computer is locked or if it’s just a simple screensaver. Yes! The screensaver disappears, leaving behind a screen that is open to the weirdest looking internet browser I’ve ever seen. And maybe that’s my disassociate amnesia at work again, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t normal.
I peer closer, reading what it says over the search bar:
THE ORDER OF THE OWED ARCHIVES
My heart skips a beat. What the… Dallas made the society sound like no big deal, but they actually have their own archives online? That’s so weird. And I can’t see how it would have anything to do with me, since my palm is whole and I’m definitely not a member, but since this looks like the only searchengine I can find, I shrug my shoulders and type my name into the box.
L-U-C-Y W-R-I-G-H-T
To my shock, a single article populates almost instantly.
It’s a wedding announcement.
EIGHTEEN
AGAIN
LUCY
Seeing it there, a relief I didn’t even know I was searching for slams into me.
I don’t know why. I knew I was married. I have a ring, and a devoted husband who’s told me all about our married life, even if he refuses to give more information about our estrangement other than that he believes it was his fault.
Still, though I can’t quite explain why, I click on the link with trembling fingers.
The page loads and a pair of photographs appear. I know the one on the left intimately. My hair is a little longer, my smile a little brighter, and I don’t have that dazed, lost look in my eyes like I do now. I’m obviously younger, which makes sense. The announcement is dated for the end of October, five years ago.
But the man on the right? The man I supposedly married?
That’s not Dallas.
He’s older than fresh-faced Lucy. I’d say he’s at least thirty-five, maybe even forty when you take in the handful of white hairs standing out against his slicked-back black mane. Hehas dark, fathomless eyes, and a smirk that turns my stomach though I’ve never seen this man before.
And that’s a lie. That’s a fucking lie.
I’ve seen him before.
I’vedreamedabout him…
I hurriedly read the paragraph below.
With the blessing of Jack Collins and the Order of the Owed, Mr. Julian Fairchild of 139 Rosewood Place is pleased to announce his wedding to Ms. Lucille Anne Wright on October 16th…
Julian Fairchild. This says I married a man named Julian Fairchild in a union blessed by theKing, a man called Jack Collins.
Collins.Collins.
Disregarding how there can be any such King when he live in fucking America and that, despite wannabe government officials thinking a dictatorship was in order, we’re still not a monarchy, I notice that Jack Colins’s named is underline in blue. It’s a hyperlink, and I click that, too.
When I typed in my name, I only got one result. This Jack fella? He hashundreds.
I don’t know where to start—but then one article headline stands out to me and I zoom the cursor right toward the line that says:
