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“A house?” I ask, confused. “Nah, we met up in an apartment.”
More paper rifling. “Mmm… no. No, she doesn’t. Only thing in her name is a house she’s renting. Maybe she had you meet her at a friend’s? Family?”
“She didn’t say anything about that when I went over there.”
“I imagine she had other things in mind.”
I scoff. “Yeah, tell me about it.”
“I can have my guy look into it.”
“Do that. Anyway, so she’s renting a house. Cool. What else?”
“Well, she seems to live fairly simply. She leaves to work at a bank early in the morning, and gets back just before a young girl comes home off a school bus.”
That rings some alarm bells. “She’s got another daughter?”
“Not sure. My guy is digging more. It’s harder to get info on kids, for good reason.”
I’m shocked. If Holly is Violet’s mother, that means my daughter has a whole older sister.
Put a pin in that one for now. One crisis at a time.
“I don’t get why this is good news, Elliot. These are just facts.”
“I said it was good news according to a certain perspective. Facts are good. Facts can be built upon.”
“So, what’s the less good news?” My patience can only last so long.
“Those documents you submitted? The marriage license, the pictures, everything? They’re fakes. All of them. I don’t know who she got to doctor any of this, but the Photoshop job is insanely good. The thing that stood out about the license is the seal on it. It isn’t raised the way licenses in Vegas at the time were. There’s also some small detail discrepancies.”
Fakes. I knew it. I’m not married to her at all!
“Fuck yeah. Okay, but I’m confused, why is that a bad thing? That’s a crime, isn’t it? I can press charges.”
“At the most, she’d get a misdemeanor. She’s got a clean record. If she’s Violet’s mother, it would look bad on your end if you were trying to get her caught up in charges on something that the court will look at as minor. At worst, she’ll be painted as an emotionally damaged woman. Probably offered some counseling. Either way, you’d be the aggressor here.”
“‘Aggressor’? She tried to fake her way into a marriage with me!”
“I’m just telling you about the perception. You are—you were—a playboy who left a bunch of women in your wake. It would be reasonable to assume some would get attached. You’d be the one in the wrong on the merit of stringing her along and then leaving her.”
I drag a hand down my face and groan. Why’s this the shit that’s coming back to bite me in the ass?
“Okay, so what now? You said if she’s Violet’s mother. Shouldn’t the maternity tests be in by now?”
“Yeah, about that… I contacted them for an update. They said there’s no result of a maternity test for a Holly Wilson.”
I grit my teeth. “But she said she got it?—”
“I know. They’re saying something happened and the results were lost somehow. She’s going to have to schedule another one, but at this point, it’s something between her and the facility. Our hands are tied.”
“So she can just string this along as long as she wants.”
“Looks like it. But I have my P.I. digging deeper. If she was willing to forge those documents, there’s gotta be something else deeper there. We might be able to find something that will give you a concrete legal standing to have her stay away. In the meantime, hang tight. I’ll get in touch when I have news.”
We disconnect, but I don’t feel any better about any of this shit. I shove it all to the back of my mind. There’s nothing that I can do about Holly right now.
But Olivia owes me a conversation.
