“Did you know?”
“No.”
I showed her the letter.
“She thought the divorce was final. Fourteen years after we married, she discovered it wasn’t.”
Penelope’s expression changed.
“So when you married Mom…”
“She was still legally married to someone else.”
Neither of us spoke.
Then I continued reading.
Irene had found her first husband.
He had been shocked too.
He had believed their divorce was complete.
There was no hidden romance.
No second relationship.
No secret life.
Only an old legal mistake.
Near the bottom of the letter, Irene had written:
The rest is in the box where I kept the papers I was most afraid you would find.
I knew immediately which cabinet she meant.
Upstairs, behind the ordinary paperwork in our bedroom, I found a small cardboard box I had never seen before.
Inside were legal documents.
The first confirmed Irene’s earlier marriage.
The second confirmed it had still been valid when she married me.
