The name was Rosalind Acker. For a moment, I could not hear anything except the courthouse air conditioner. The license had been issued three years earlier, but that did not mean Nathaniel had legally acquired a second wife while still married to me. What it did mean was that something had been filed under his name, with his signature, and I needed answers before making accusations.
I drove straight to Memphis. Rosalind lived in a small apartment near the hospital where I had once found that parking stub. She opened the door wearing the same kind of scarf I remembered from Kroger. When I showed her the certified copy, she started crying. Rosalind had been undergoing cancer treatment when Nathaniel reappeared in her life. He told her we had divorced years earlier and that he wanted to correct the mistake he made by leaving her.
Those Tuesday “side jobs” had been visits to Rosalind, treatments, pharmacy runs, and eventually quiet evenings in her apartment. She believed she was his wife. I believed I was his only wife. Neither of us had known the truth about the other. We sat together for almost two hours comparing messages, dates, insurance paperwork, and the stories Nathaniel had told us.
I did not drive home screaming. I called an attorney. Rosalind did the same. The validity of that second license and everything connected to it would have to be handled properly, because Nathaniel could not simply rewrite twenty years of legal history with a courthouse form. When I finally confronted him, he looked from me to Rosalind and understood immediately why we were standing together. For years, I thought I had stolen Nathaniel from her. The truth was uglier and simpler: neither of us had ever truly had him.
