I had spent most of the night looking at the ceiling.
Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw the restaurant.
Lamar sitting beside Rhoda.
Her gold bracelet.
The waitress holding the tea pitcher.
Then I saw the grave back in Georgia.
The flowers.
The church.
The empty casket.
I tried to put the two pictures together.
I couldn't.
I had loved Lamar for nearly half a century.
Yet I had spent two years praying for a man who was eating, sleeping, and making plans somewhere else.
By sunrise, I knew what I needed to do.
I wouldn't go to another meeting with him until somebody in authority understood what was happening.
At seven thirty, I called Ione.
She answered quickly.
I asked whether she was awake.
She told me she had been up for hours.
I could hear the concern in her voice.
“Has he contacted you again?”
“No. But someone else has.”
I told her about Eddie.
Not every detail.
There was too much to explain over the phone.
I told her I had documents and needed to go to the police.
She said she would meet me downstairs.
No questions.
No hesitation.
That was Ione.
I stood beside the hotel bed for a moment after hanging up.
Then I opened my suitcase.
I chose my navy-blue blouse.
Black trousers.
Small silver earrings.
Lamar had given me those earrings for our thirtieth anniversary.
I held one between my fingers before putting it on.
I don't know why I chose them.
Perhaps I wanted to remind myself that my marriage had contained real moments.
There had been good years.
There had been laughter.
There had been ordinary mornings when I believed I was loved.
I didn't want to pretend all of that had disappeared.
But I also couldn't let those memories prevent me from seeing what Lamar had done.
I fastened the second earring.
Then I looked at myself in the mirror.
I saw an older woman who hadn't slept.
My eyes were tired.
My mouth seemed tighter than it used to be.
But I recognized myself.
I had worked forty-one years as a nurse.
I had stood beside frightened patients.
I had helped families through the worst days of their lives.
I had worked twelve-hour shifts and gone home to cook supper.
I had learned to stay calm when other people panicked.
Now I needed to use some of that steadiness for myself.
I took my phone.
I gathered the papers I had brought.
I placed everything in my purse.
Then I went downstairs.
Ione was waiting.
She looked at my face and didn't say anything foolish.
She simply asked whether I was ready.
“I think so.”
She linked her arm through mine.
“Then we'll go.”
At eight fifteen, I was sitting inside the police station in Marathon.
A detective came to speak with me.
His name was James Walker.
He looked to be in his late forties.
His eyes were tired.
He carried a notebook that appeared to have spent years in his pocket.
I noticed those things because I needed something ordinary to concentrate on.
The detective asked me to begin at the beginning.
I looked down at my hands.
For a moment, I couldn't decide where the beginning was.
Was it the day Lamar disappeared?
The day the sheriff came?
The day I buried the empty casket?
Or the moment I found him kissing Rhoda?
I decided to start with the restaurant.
I explained that my husband had been declared dead after disappearing at Lake Seminole.
I told Detective Walker about the funeral.
Then I showed him the photograph I had taken in Florida.
He studied the screen.
I watched his face.
I wanted him to react with the same shock I had felt.
He didn't.
He was doing his job.
He looked carefully at the image, then asked whether I was certain of the man's identity.
I nearly laughed.
I had lived with Lamar for forty-seven years.
I knew how his mouth moved when he was irritated.
I knew the shape of his hands.
I knew the way he touched his beard.
And I knew the sound of his voice.
“Yes,” I said. “That's my husband.”
The detective asked whether I had spoken to him.
I told him we had sat at the same table.
He had used my name.
He had talked about our marriage.
He had admitted things about the bait shop.
He had asked how I found him.
Detective Walker wrote something down.
Then he asked about the financial documents.
I opened the photograph of the bank transfer.
He studied it.
I explained that it showed sixty thousand dollars leaving our joint savings account on October 14.
The day the sheriff came to my house.
I told him the receiving account carried Clifton Gaither's name.
Then I explained who Clifton was.
Rhoda's late husband.
A man who had died before that account was supposedly opened.
The detective stopped writing for a moment.
“Where did you get this image?”
I explained the messages.
I told him the sender was Eddie Mercer.
I described Eddie's work at the bait shop and the conversation we had the night before.
The detective wrote his name.
Then he asked whether I had the original financial documents.
I told him I had some paperwork but not everything.
Eddie had more copies.
There were records from the business.
There was also a storage unit in Georgia.
I told him everything I knew about that too.
I wanted him to understand that Lamar hadn't simply left me.
There were questions about money.
Signatures.
Accounts opened under names that didn't belong to the people using them.
The detective listened without interrupting.
When I finished, he closed his notebook.
He told me the matter could involve serious financial wrongdoing.
But he also explained that investigators would need evidence before deciding exactly what charges were appropriate.
Bank records.
Original documents.
Proof of false identities.
Information about Lamar's disappearance.
I understood.
I had spent years working in a profession where you couldn't make decisions based only on what somebody seemed to be experiencing.
You had to check.
You had to document.
You had to make sure.
Still, it was difficult to hear.
Because I knew what had happened to me.
I knew the man in the restaurant was Lamar.
I knew I had buried an empty casket.
I knew I had lost money after he disappeared.
But knowing something in my own heart wasn't the same as proving it in an investigation.
I nodded.
“Tell me what you need.”
He asked about the original missing-person report.
I told him the search had taken place at Lake Seminole.
He asked whether there had been an official death certificate.
I said yes.
It had been issued after the required waiting period.
I still had a copy.
The detective asked me to bring it.
He explained that the authorities would need to examine the circumstances surrounding Lamar's reported death.
I wrote that down.
Then he warned me not to make private agreements with Lamar.
I wasn't to sign anything.
I wasn't to destroy or delete messages.
And I shouldn't meet him alone.
I thought about the appointment I had arranged at the restaurant.
The way Lamar had agreed so quickly.
The way his eyes changed when I mentioned financial documents.
“I understand,” I said.
He gave me his card.
I held it for a moment.
It was only a small rectangle of paper.
A name.
A phone number.
But after two years of feeling that nobody could tell me what had happened to my husband, it gave me something I hadn't expected.
A place to begin.
I thanked him.
Then I walked outside.
Ione was waiting near the car.
She came toward me immediately.
“What did he say?”
“They're looking into it.”
She searched my face.
“That's something.”
“Yes.”
I looked down at the card in my hand.
For the first time since seeing Lamar, I didn't feel completely alone with the truth.
There was still a great deal I didn't understand.
But somebody was listening.
And there was one person I needed to see next.
“Eddie.”
Ione looked at me.
“What about him?”
“I need to hear what he knows in person.”
She nodded.
“Then we'll find him.”
Eddie was staying at a small motel outside Marathon.
He had told me where to come.
When Ione and I arrived, he was standing near an old pickup truck.
I recognized him despite the years.
His hair had turned almost entirely gray.
His shoulders seemed lower.
He wore a cap.
The same kind he used to wear around the bait shop.
When he saw me, he removed it.
“Mrs. Ashby.”
“Hello, Eddie.”
We stood there for a moment.
I remembered seeing him at Lamar's funeral.
He had looked so serious.
Now I wondered what it had cost him to stand in that church knowing something wasn't right.
He looked down.
“I owe you an apology.”
I shook my head.
“I need information more than an apology.”
He nodded.
Then he led us into his motel room.
It was small.
There was a bed, a chair, and a table.
Eddie placed a thick brown envelope in front of me.
I could tell it was full before he opened it.
Inside were bank records.
Receipts.
Copies of business forms.
Handwritten pages.
I reached for one of the handwritten sheets.
The writing was Lamar's.
I knew it instantly.
He had written notes to me for years.
Sometimes he left messages beside the telephone.
Sometimes he added little reminders to grocery lists.
Every Christmas, he signed our cards in the same uneven handwriting.
I stared at the page.
Then I read the heading.
It described a plan for beginning a new life.
Below it were four amounts.
Sixty thousand dollars.
Forty-five thousand.
Seventy-two thousand five hundred.
Sixty-two thousand five hundred.
At the bottom, Lamar had written the total.
Two hundred and forty thousand dollars.
I looked up.
“Is this the amount you mentioned last night?”
Eddie nodded.
He explained that the money had been moved from the bait shop over several months.
He believed Lamar was preparing to leave Georgia.
I asked whether Rhoda had been part of the plan.
Eddie said yes.
I sat down.
It was one thing to hear that over the phone.
Another to see the figures written in my husband's hand.
I ran my finger beside the final number.
Then I asked how long he had been preparing.
Eddie said the plan had been developing for at least six months before the reported drowning.
Six months.
I thought about our kitchen.
Our bedroom.
The bait shop.
The ordinary evenings when I assumed Lamar was tired because business had been difficult.
I thought about the way he would sit in his chair and watch television.
Sometimes he fell asleep before the news ended.
I would turn down the volume.
I would cover his legs if the room was cold.
And while I was taking care of him, he was planning how to disappear.
The thought hurt differently from seeing him with Rhoda.
The affair was betrayal.
The paperwork was something colder.
It meant he had spent time thinking.
Calculating.
Preparing.
Choosing.
Eddie explained that business loans had created problems.
Some debts were connected to paperwork bearing my name.
Other documents had been prepared using signatures I might not have authorized.
I asked him to show me.
He opened another section of the envelope.
There were pages with my name printed at the bottom.
Some signatures looked like mine.
Others seemed slightly wrong.
A letter curved differently.
A line ended too sharply.
One document carried a date I recognized.
I had been working a twelve-hour shift at the hospital that day.
I remembered coming home exhausted.
Lamar had been kind to me.
He made tea.
He told me to lie down and rest.
I had thought it was a loving gesture.
Now I was looking at a document suggesting my name had been used that same day.
I put the page down.
My hands were shaking.
Ione reached for it and studied the signature.
Then she looked at Eddie.
“Are you saying he copied Roberta's handwriting?”
Eddie said he had watched Lamar practice.
Not once.
More than once.
I took a slow breath.
I wanted to cry.
But there were still questions.
Eddie told me about the ledger.
About the discrepancies that first worried him.
About confronting Lamar and being told to mind his own business.
He explained that he hadn't understood Rhoda's involvement immediately.
He had known Lamar was trying to escape the business problems.
He hadn't known the plan included starting over with another woman.
I asked why he had believed any of Lamar's explanations.
Eddie looked embarrassed.
“He said you wouldn't be left without anything.”
I stared at him.
Lamar had told somebody he intended to protect me.
Then he left me paying debts.
Selling property.
Living with grief.
I could hardly understand the distance between his words and what he had done.
Eddie pushed another document toward me.
He said there was still something important.
I looked at the paper.
It was an insurance document.
At first, I assumed it concerned the bait shop.
But it was connected to Lamar's life insurance.
I studied the beneficiary section.
My name should have been there.
For years, I had believed it was.
Instead, the document listed a company I didn't recognize.
I looked at Eddie.
“What is this business?”
He explained that Lamar had been changing several financial arrangements before he disappeared.
Eddie didn't know whether every change had been completed.
He had kept copies because he was afraid someone might eventually blame him for the missing money.
I stared at the unfamiliar company name.
I had thought my husband was arranging insurance for our security.
Apparently, he had been arranging documents that could remove me from it.
I handed the page to Ione.
She shook her head slowly.
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
Then I asked Eddie about the storage unit.
He gave me the address in Georgia.
He told me he would help the authorities examine it.
I reminded him I had already spoken with Detective Walker.
Eddie said he was willing to cooperate fully.
I believed he meant it.
At least, I wanted to.
I had spent two years surrounded by people who seemed certain about Lamar's death.
Now I needed to learn how to trust evidence instead of appearances.
Around noon, my phone rang.
The caller was Detective Walker.
He said investigators had contacted the authorities in Georgia.
The financial documents and account information were being reviewed.
They were also checking the identity used to establish the account connected to Clifton.
I asked about Lamar.
The detective said they had identified a possible address for him in Marathon.
I felt my heart beating harder.
“Have you spoken with him?”
He said the investigation was still developing.
They needed to establish the facts before taking further action.
He told me again to remain somewhere safe.
And to avoid direct contact if possible.
I thanked him.
Then I put the phone down.
Eddie looked at me.
“Did they locate him?”
“They may have.”
He sat back.
For a moment, he looked relieved.
Then he looked concerned.
He told me Lamar wouldn't take the news calmly.
I thought about the restaurant.
The warning glance he gave Rhoda.
The way he had asked about my financial records.
I knew Eddie was probably right.
Later that afternoon, at three forty-seven, my phone began ringing.
I looked at the screen.
Lamar.
His name.
The name I had once hoped to see every day after he disappeared.
For two years, I would have given almost anything to hear his voice again.
Now I was staring at his call and wondering what he wanted from me.
Ione saw the screen.
She told me not to answer.
I knew why.
But there was still something inside me that wanted to hear whether Lamar could finally speak honestly.
So I answered.
Click here to continue reading: PART 4: My Husband Called to Stop Me From Speaking to the Police, Then Brought an Envelope That Made His Betrayal Even Worse
I Sat Across From the Husband I Had Buried Two Years Earlier and Waited for Him to Explain Why He Was Alive
Part 3 of 25
