The metadata showed it had been created seventeen months before our wedding.
My mouth went dry.
“That’s impossible.”
“We verified it.”
“Ryan said he first saw those papers during probate.”
“He lied.”
Another file.
A background report.
My father.
My mother.
Me.
My military assignment.
My education.
My address at the time.
Even the gym I used.
At the bottom was a handwritten note.
Single. Daughter. No siblings. Close to parents.
I stopped breathing.
“No.”
Vega didn’t speak.
Another photograph.
A charity banquet in Baltimore.
I was in the background wearing a red dress.
It had been taken three weeks before Ryan and I met.
Ryan had always told people we met by accident at a coffee shop after he spilled sugar packets across my table.
He had made me laugh.
He had asked whether the empty chair opposite me was waiting for someone.
I had said no.
