Jenny's POV
The afternoon sun streamed through the bay window of what I'd called home for four years, painting golden stripes across the polished hardwood floor. In the living room, the sounds of Ella's favorite cartoon filtered through the house—giggles and exaggerated character voices that usually made me smile.
Today, they sounded distant. Like listening through water.
My fingers trembled as they traced the embossed seal at the bottom of the document. The paper was crisp, official-looking, with that particular government-issued stiffness that promised legitimacy. My marriage certificate. Or what I'd believed was my marriage certificate for the past four years, three months, and seventeen days.
CERTIFICATE OF MARRIAGE
Between: Ian Michael Carter and Jennifer Grace Thomas
Date: June 15, 2020
Location: County Clerk's Office, District 14
Everything looked correct. Our names. The date. Even the clerk's signature looked appropriately bureaucratic. But there was one problem.
The seal was wrong.
Not obviously wrong. Not to anyone who hadn't spent three months interning at the County Records Department during university. Not to anyone who hadn't meticulously filed actual marriage certificates, birth certificates, death certificates—all the documents that marked the beginnings and endings of lives.
This seal was off by a millimeter in its placement. The holographic effect was slightly duller than it should be. And the registration number in the corner—C-2020-4892—when I'd just typed it into the county's online verification portal ten minutes ago, it returned a different couple entirely.
*No record found* would have been better. That could have been a glitch. A system error. But *"Registration number C-2020-4892 corresponds to marriage of James Robertson and Angela Lee"* was specific. Was final.
My breath hitched, the sound too loud in the quiet study. I pressed a hand to my chest, feeling my heart hammer against my ribs like a trapped bird.
Four years.
Four years of playing wife. Four years of family gatherings where I smiled until my cheeks ached. Four years of nodding politely when Ian's mother made pointed comments about "real marriages" and "traditional values." Four years of tolerating Dean's sneers and snide remarks about how I'd "landed well."
Four years of raising Ella. Teaching her to read. Nursing her through fevers. Holding her during thunderstorms when the thunder shook the house and she'd bury her face in my neck, whispering, "Don't go, Mommy."
All based on a piece of paper that wasn't real.
The door to the study creaked open. I jerked, instinctively covering the certificate with a nearby folder, my movements too sharp, too guilty.
"Mommy?" Ella's small voice, tentative. "Are you crying?"
I hadn't realized I was. I swiped at my cheeks, forcing a smile that felt cracked and brittle. "No, sweetheart. Just... dust. Allergies."
She wasn't fooled. At four years old, Ella possessed an emotional radar that was unnervingly accurate. She padded into the room in her dinosaur socks—the ones with little spikes along the tops that she insisted on wearing every day this week. Her dark curls were escaping the ponytail I'd carefully crafted that morning, and there was a smudge of grape jelly on her chin from her afternoon snack.
"You look sad," she announced, climbing into my lap without invitation. The familiar weight of her, the way she immediately tucked her head under my chin, was normally a comfort. Today, it felt like a weight pressing on a fresh bruise.
"I'm not sad, baby," I lied, smoothing her hair. "Just thinking."
"About what?"
"Grown-up things." The phrase I used for everything from bills to existential dread.
She was quiet for a moment, her small hand patting my cheek. "Daddy said grown-up things are boring. He says we should color instead."
A lump formed in my throat. *Daddy.* Ian. The man I was supposedly married to. The man who slept in the guest room down the hall. The man who was currently on a "business trip" with Dean, though we both knew what that meant.
"Coloring sounds better," I managed, my voice thick.
Ella twisted in my lap, her eyes landing on the folder hiding the certificate. "What's that?"
"Just paperwork, love."
"Like my preschool papers?"
"Sort of."
She reached for it, and I caught her hand gently. "Not this one, Ella-bella. This one's... messy."
Her brow furrowed, that same expression Ian got when he was puzzling over a complex design at his architecture firm. "I can help clean it!"
The innocence of it shattered something inside me. I pulled her close, breathing in the scent of childhood—grape jelly, crayons, and the strawberry shampoo she loved.
"You help me every day just by being you," I whispered into her hair.
She hugged me back, her small arms tight around my neck. "I love you, Mommy."
The words, so freely given, so unconditional, broke the last of my composure. A tear escaped, tracing a hot path down my cheek and landing in her hair.
"I love you too, Ella. More than anything."
She pulled back, her brown eyes serious. "More than ice cream?"
I choked out a laugh that was half sob. "Even more than chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream."
Her eyes went wide, the ultimate measure of love in her four-year-old worldview. "Wow."
The front door slammed open downstairs, followed by the clatter of keys and the sound of Kate's cheerful voice calling, "Hello! Anyone home? I come bearing groceries and gossip!"
Ella scrambled off my lap. "Aunt Kate!" she yelled, already thundering toward the stairs.
"Walk, don't run!" I called after her automatically, the motherly admonition so ingrained it bypassed the turmoil in my mind.
I stared at the folder. At the lie beneath it.
Four years.
I'd entered this arrangement with my eyes open. Or so I'd thought. A contract marriage. A business arrangement. Me, the homeless "orphan" with a scholarship and nowhere to go. Kate, my only friend, pregnant and panicked, her conservative family cutting her off. Ian, her gay cousin, needing a beard to satisfy his traditional parents and secure his inheritance.
*"It's just paper, Jenny,"* Kate had pleaded, her hands on her barely-showing bump. *"Just signatures. You'll have a home. Ian will have his freedom. My baby will have two parents on the birth certificate. Everyone wins."*
*Just paper.*
Except it wasn't even that.
Footsteps on the stairs. Kate appeared in the doorway, grocery bags hanging from both arms, her blonde hair escaping its messy bun. "There you are! I've been texting you for an hour. Did you—" She stopped, taking in my face. "Jenny? What's wrong?"
I couldn't speak. Couldn't form the words. I just nudged the folder toward her.
Frowning, she set down the bags and approached. "What is it? Bills? Did something happen with..." Her voice trailed off as she lifted the folder, as her eyes scanned the certificate. For a moment, she just stared.
Then her face went pale. "What... what is this?"
"It's not real, Kate." My voice sounded hollow, like it was coming from another room. "The certificate. It's a forgery."
She shook her head, a frantic denial. "No. That's impossible. We went to the courthouse. I was there. I saw you sign..."
"Look at the seal." I pointed, my finger steady now. Numb. "The placement. The registration number. I checked it online, Kate. This number belongs to a James Robertson and Angela Lee. Married the same day. Same courthouse."
"But... why?" she whispered, her eyes wide with dawning horror. "Who would...?"
"I don't know." I took a shaky breath. "But I've been living a lie based on a lie. I'm not Ian's wife. I never was."
The implications began to crash over me, wave after wave.
Ella's legal status.
My right to be here.
The immigration paperwork I'd filed last year based on this marriage.
The medical decisions I'd made for Ella when she had pneumonia.
The school registration forms I'd signed as "parent/guardian."
All of it. Built on sand.
Kate sank into the chair opposite me, the certificate slipping from her fingers to flutter to the floor. "Oh my god. Ian's parents. They... they insisted on handling the paperwork. They said they had connections to expedite it because of the... the 'sensitive nature' of the arrangement."
Of course. The Carters. Old money. Traditional values. The kind of people who viewed my scholarship-student, no-family background as barely acceptable, even as a fake daughter-in-law. They'd probably taken one look at me and decided not to risk a real legal tie to someone like me.
"Does Ian know?" I asked, though I already suspected the answer.
Kate shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. "He wouldn't. He's not... he's not deceitful like that. He was as reluctant about this as you were. He just wanted to help me."
Downstairs, Ella's laughter floated up the stairs, pure and joyful. She was showing Kate's daughter, Mia, her latest dinosaur drawing. Unaware that the foundation of her little world had just developed a crack that might split it in two.
"What do we do?" Kate whispered.
I looked from her panicked face to the forged document on the floor. At the embossed seal that promised a legitimacy it didn't possess.
For four years, I'd played my part. The grateful orphan. The compliant fake wife. The devoted stand-in mother. I'd swallowed insults. I'd smiled through discomfort. I'd built my entire life around a child who wasn't mine, in a house that wasn't my home, with a man who wasn't my husband.
All because I thought I had no other choice. No family to return to. No safety net.
But this changed everything.
"I need to see the original agreement," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. "The one we all signed. The terms."
"Why?" Kate asked, but her face said she already knew.
"Because if this," I pointed at the certificate, "is fake, then what else did they lie about? What other terms did they alter? What did I actually agree to?"
The numbness was receding, replaced by something colder. Sharper. Something that felt dangerously like the beginning of anger.
"Jenny, please," Kate reached for my hand, her fingers icy. "Don't do anything rash. We'll figure this out. Together. Just... give me time to talk to Ian. To understand."
I pulled my hand back gently. "How long, Kate? Another four years? Until Ella starts school and they decide I'm no longer necessary? Until Ian meets someone he actually wants to be with and they need to remove the inconvenient fake wife?"
The words hung between us, harsh and true.
"I would never let that happen," she said, but the doubt was there in her eyes. She couldn't promise that. Not really. Not when her own position in this family was tenuous, dependent on Mark's goodwill and the Carters' acceptance of her "mistake."
Ella appeared in the doorway again, holding two pieces of paper covered in bright crayon scribbles. "Look! Mia and me made pictures for you! Mine is a dinosaur family. See? Mommy dinosaur, daddy dinosaur, and baby dinosaur."
She thrust the paper at me. The dinosaurs were lumpy, misshapen, drawn with the enthusiastic imperfection of a four-year-old. But they were holding hands. A family.
My throat closed.
"Is it good, Mommy?" Ella asked, her face upturned, waiting for praise.
"It's perfect, baby," I whispered, taking the drawing. "Absolutely perfect."
She beamed, then dashed off again, her dinosaur socks making skidding sounds on the hardwood.
Kate watched her go, then turned back to me, her expression pleading. "For her, Jenny. Whatever you're thinking... just wait. For Ella."
I looked down at the drawing in my hands. At the happy dinosaur family. Then at the forged certificate on the floor.
Four years of my life. Four years of Ella's life.
Built on a lie.
I carefully set the drawing aside, picked up the certificate, and folded it precisely along its original creases.
"Okay," I said, my voice quiet but firm. "I'll wait. Until Ian gets back."
Kate sagged with relief. "Thank you. We'll fix this. I promise."
But as she gathered her groceries and went downstairs to join the children, I remained at the desk. The folded certificate felt heavy in my hand. Like a verdict. Like a sentence.
I opened the top drawer, the one where I kept important documents—Ella's birth certificate (real, I'd checked), her vaccination records, the deed to this house (not in my name, of course).
I hesitated for just a moment.
Then I placed the forged marriage certificate inside. Not with the other important papers. But in the very back. Hidden behind the stack of old birthday cards and forgotten receipts.
A secret. For now.
Because some truths, once discovered, couldn't be undiscovered. Some lies, once exposed, demanded consequences.
And I had two weeks until Ian returned from his trip.
Two weeks to decide what happened next.
Two weeks before everything changed forever.