Chapter 7 - The Wedding That Came Before Mine
The certificate was real. What it meant required more work.
Darius and Tasha had married in Nevada eleven years earlier. A later court record showed a petition for annulment, but no final order appeared in the initial search. Patrice requested certified copies and cautioned me not to assume the answer until the court confirmed the status.
I sat at the kitchen counter in Lorraine's temporary apartment, peeling an orange.
"Eleven years," I said.
My mother washed a dish.
"You were still in graduate school."
"I met her there."
"She may have been married to him the whole time you knew her."
I set down the orange.
The betrayal had layers I could not absorb in one sitting. Tasha had introduced Darius to me at a fundraiser. She had stood beside me at our wedding. She had cried when I announced my pregnancy.
Had she been grieving something? Protecting something? Or waiting for me to disappear?
Yvette came to meet us with her attorney. She was a Black woman in her forties, a nurse with tired eyes and a direct manner.
"I should've said something sooner," she told me.
"Why didn't you?"
"Because Tasha told me the marriage was over. And because Darius threatened to expose a debt I couldn't pay."
"What debt?"
"Hospital bills. He bought them through a collection company."
I looked at Patrice. She made a note.
Yvette described Tasha's life with Darius before I met him. He had promised to launch her design business. He had used her name on accounts. When Micah was born, Tasha moved into a separate apartment. She told people the boy's father lived overseas.
"Is Darius his father?" I asked.
"She says he is. I haven't seen proof."
That was enough. I did not need to turn Micah's life into a guessing game.
Yvette handed over a copy of a message Tasha had sent the night before the flight.
If she signs, everything stops. If she doesn't, he says he'll make it look like an accident.
I felt the room tilt.
"Why didn't Tasha call the police?"
"She told me she was scared."
"She could've warned me."
Yvette's eyes filled.
"I know."
I left the table and stood at the window until I could breathe again.
Patrice submitted the messages to investigators. Detective Reed told us they were examining the context and authenticity. He would not promise an arrest on my timetable.
That night, Darius appeared at the apartment building. Security stopped him in the lobby. He demanded to see me and said I was keeping him from his child.
I listened to the report through the intercom.
My daughter kicked beneath my hand.
"He doesn't get to use her as a key," I said.
Patrice conveyed that all communication should go through counsel.
Darius left.
Ten minutes later, Tasha sent a voice message to my new number.
"Simone, I know you hate me. You should. But please don't let him get Micah. He has papers that say I abandoned him. I didn't. I was at work. He made me sign things I couldn't read because I was crying. I don't know what to do."
I listened twice.
Part of me wanted to ask why she had cared about her son but not mine.
Instead, I forwarded the message to Patrice.
"Can we make sure somebody checks on Micah?"
"Yes," she said. "We'll handle it appropriately."
I did not forgive Tasha.
I also refused to punish a child for what his mother had done.
The next morning, the certified Nevada record arrived.
May you like
The annulment petition had been dismissed.
Darius and Tasha had never legally ended their marriage.
