My Fiancé Left the Phone Line Open One Day Before Our Wedding, and I Heard Him Tell His Mother He Planned to Take My House, My Savings, and Then Get Rid of Me. So I Changed a Few Details About the Ceremony—and When the Final Wedding Gift Appeared on the Screen, Nathan Learned He Had Never Been the One Running the Con.

I stared at the speaker.

“What did you say?”

“She’s listed in an old property record as Linda Bennett.”

Ben frowned.

“Bennett.”

Marcus continued.

“Same address as Nicholas Bennett.”

“So she is his mother.”

“No.”

My chest tightened.

“Then who is she?”

Another pause.

“His wife.”

Nobody moved.

I heard the refrigerator motor hum.

A car passed outside.

Somewhere upstairs, one of the heating vents clicked.

Then I laughed.

I couldn’t help it.

It came out thin and almost hysterical.

“His what?”

“Wife. Linda Bennett married Nicholas Bennett seventeen years ago in Clark County.”

Rebecca sat down hard.

Ben said, “She’s like sixty.”

“Nathan is forty-seven,” Marcus replied. “Linda was thirty-eight when they married. He was thirty.”

My mind struggled to rearrange itself.

Linda.

The woman who had spent twenty-two months calling herself Nathan’s mother.

The woman who hugged me at Thanksgiving.

The woman who gave me earrings for Christmas.