This Time I Choose Me

Chapter 1 NORA The marriage certificate had a brown stain across the corner, right over my name, from the pipe that burst in my closet last week. I almost didn't bother replacing it. It was just paper. But something in me wanted it fixed, wanted it clean and whole, the way I wanted everything else in my life to be. I took the morning off work and drove to the bureau myself instead of sending an assistant. Maybe I wanted an excuse to get out of the office. Maybe some part of me already knew something was wrong and wanted to be there when I found out. The office smelled like old paper and coffee. I took a number and waited on a hard plastic chair, scrolling through emails I wasn't really reading. When my number came up, I walked to the counter and handed the clerk my ID and the damaged certificate. "I just need a replacement copy," I said. "Water damage." She nodded and typed my name into her computer. Nora Smith, Married to Daniel Whitmore. Eight years. She typed again. Frowned. Typed a third time. "Ma'am, can you confirm your husband's full name and your wedding date?" "Daniel Whitmore. June fourteenth, eight years ago." I almost laughed. "Is there a problem?" "I'm not finding a marriage record under that name for you," she said. "Let me check again." I waited, tapping my fingers on the counter. This kind of thing happened. Old systems, database migrations, human error. I wasn't worried yet. "I'm sorry," she said after a minute. "There's no record of a marriage between you and a Daniel Whitmore in our system." I actually laughed. "That's impossible. I have the certificate right here." I pulled out the water-stained paper and slid it across the counter. "See? Right there." I dug through my bag for more proof, like I was the one on trial. I found the small velvet box with my wedding ring, the one I'd taken off that morning because my hands were swollen from the heat. I found a folded wedding photo I still carried in my wallet, faded at the edges, me in white and Daniel in black, both of us laughing at something off camera. I put it all on the counter like evidence in a case I didn't know I was building. The clerk looked at the certificate carefully this time. Ran her finger down the paper, checked the seal, checked the registration number. Then she typed that number directly into her system. Her face changed. "The registration number is real," she said slowly. "There is a marriage on file under this number. Registered on the date you said, at the office you said." "So it's there. You just typed my name wrong or something." She hesitated. "The marriage is real. But the wife listed on this record isn't you." I heard the words. I understood every single one of them. But they didn't fit together into something that made sense. "What did you just say?" "The husband's name matches. Daniel Whitmore. But the wife on file is a different woman." "That's not possible," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt, which surprised me. "I am his wife. I've been his wife for eight years. I have the ring. I have the photos. I have this certificate with my name on it." "I understand this is confusing," she said, and I could tell she'd said that sentence before to other people, in other terrible moments like this one. "What I can tell you is that the official record does not list you as the wife on this registration number. It lists someone else." "Who?" "I can't share that information. Privacy regulations." "Privacy regulations," I repeated. "You're telling me my own marriage isn't mine, and you're citing privacy regulations." "I understand you're upset—" "I'm not upset. I'm confused. There's a difference." I wasn't sure that was true. My hands had started shaking, small tremors I couldn't stop no matter how hard I pressed them flat against the counter. She looked at me with something that might have been pity, and that was worse than anything else she could have done. "I'm very sorry, ma'am. I can print you a copy of what's currently on file, but I can't tell you who the other party is. You would need legal counsel to access that information, or the man himself would need to explain." "Print it," I said. "I want to see it." She printed the page and slid it across the counter, and I stared at his name in black ink, correct in every letter, sitting next to a name that wasn't mine. The bureau had blacked out the wife's name with a thick redaction bar, but everything else was right there. His birthdate. His ID number. The registration date. June fourteenth, eight years ago. The exact same day I married him at the small courthouse near his mother's house, the one with the cracked front steps, the one where his best friend Adam stood beside him as a witness and I stood beside my sister and cried through the whole thing because I was so happy. "Is there anything else I can help you with?" the clerk asked. I didn't answer her. I picked up my ring, my photo, my ruined certificate, and the new printed page with the blacked-out name, and I walked out of the bureau into the parking lot, and I sat in my car and I didn't turn the key. Eight years. I went back through them the way you check every room in a house after you hear a strange noise, methodical, careful, trying not to miss anything. The wedding itself. Small, quiet, exactly what I wanted, because Daniel said big weddings were a waste of money that could go into the company instead. I'd agreed. I always agreed. I thought that made me easy to love. The honeymoon we never really took, because he was busy with a merger. The years after that blurred into work and dinners and quiet nights where he came home late and I didn't ask too many questions because I trusted him. I trusted him the way you trust gravity, without thinking about it, without needing proof. I thought about Sophia Davids. My best friend since university. The one who came to my wedding and cried harder than my own sister. The one who helped me pick out my ring because Daniel said he was terrible with details like that. The one who always seemed to know exactly where he was, exactly what he liked, exactly how to make him laugh at parties when I was stuck talking to someone else across the room. I used to think that was just what a good best friend and a good husband looked like together. Easy. Comfortable. No friction. Now I sat in a parking lot with a redacted name burning a hole through a piece of paper, and I wondered how comfortable really is supposed to look. I thought about the trips Daniel took for work, the ones SOphia always seemed to be traveling for too, different cities, same weeks, and I had never once put those two facts side by side until this exact moment, sitting in my car, my hands cold despite the heat outside. I thought about my father's company, the one I signed over half my shares of two years ago because Daniel said it made sense for tax purposes, said it would protect us both, said trust was the whole point of marriage. I thought about the word wife sitting next to a black bar where a name should be. My phone buzzed in the cupholder. A text from Daniel. "Dinner tonight? Mom wants to talk about the anniversary party." Our anniversary was in eleven days. June fourteenth. Eight years. I looked at the message for a long time before I put the phone face down on the passenger seat.