Page 115 of One and Only

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

Her smile was secretive. “I had my reasons, and I’m old enough and wise enough not to share them.”

I sat up. “What sealed it for you? Why we’d done it?”

“Pastor Bill,” she said with a wry smile. “I ran into him last week, and he just couldn’t stop rambling about that marriage license and how he’s been losing sleep wanting to know that Greer sent it in.”

I huffed a humorless laugh. “I told her that wouldn’t work.”

“So you’re not actually married,” she said quietly.

I stared down at the simple gold ring on my hand, gently spinning it. “No.”

Why did it hurt to say it out loud, after all the weeks agonizing over it?

One simple word felt like it was cutting my throat open, exposing a raw nerve that hadn’t existed before. It was the hardest truth I’d admitted yet.

“It felt like the right thing to do, at the time,” I said. “We had, I don’t know, sixty days to file it with the state, thought we could at least avoid committing fraud.”

She inhaled slowly. “And you said your vows…”

“Forty-five days ago,” I finished. I’d counted the night before while I stared up at the ceiling.

Sheila raised her eyebrows slowly.

“I don’t know what the right thing is anymore,” I admitted. “If a lie is ever worth the cost of telling it.”

“I wish I could answer that for you,” she said. “But I’m afraid it’s not my place.”

I gave her a curious look. “But you still told me you know.”

“I did. Because I could see it eating you up, and I don’t want it to do that either.” She smiled gently. “You both have good hearts, you made a decision rooted in the love of someone else, and that matters to me. It should matter to you too, as you think about what you do moving forward.”

I weighed her words before answering.

There was a choice to be made, and she was leaving it up to me. To me and Greer.

“You’re not planning on telling anyone,” I said quietly.

After a long moment, she shook her head.

“Not even Tim?”

She let out a slow breath, and as she did, a tear slid down her cheek. She made no move to brush it away. “It’s not my story to tell, Beckett. It’s yours and Greer’s. My husband was as happy as I’ve seen him in months that day, and no matter where it came from, you and Greer gave him something he’s always wanted to experience.” Her voice trembled. “He’s the best man I’ve ever known. Stepped up in a million ways for kids that weren’t his and loved them through all the hard. So no, I’m not going to take that moment from him.”

There was nothing for me to say, all I could do was sit and listen. Absorb all the different shades of gray in this situation that I’d ignored.

All I could do was weigh the truth, how it stacked up for the people affected by this. What it would cost by telling it.

She stood, settling a hand on my shoulder.

“You’re a good man, Beckett. And a good man for my daughter, which I realize is a separate issue from what you’re facing. But I just need you to know that so you can stop beating yourself up.”

I stayed out there after she went back in the house.

I thought about everything she’d said. What it meant in the context of the last couple of months, and how they’d parented their kids, how they’d modeled a healthy kind of love that I’d never known myself.

Maybe that was why Greer always seemed to know how to handle Olive so well because she was raised with love and support, by parents who accepted that all their kids came with different struggles and different ways of handling things.

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