Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire #2) (7 page)

Hemi

The next morning at eight-thirty, when I left to get the license, Hope wanted to go with me.

“I’ve never applied for a marriage license before,” she said.

“It won’t be exciting,” I said. “Standing in a queue.”

She looked sideways at me. “It’s New Zealand. Just how much of a queue are you expecting at the…where?”

“Katikati Library. You don’t know how many old ladies will be paying their rates or renewing their dog licenses. And I have calls to make. Things I need to get sorted for today. I need some time. I’ll be back in an hour, and we’ll go to Auckland.” I stepped closer and took her in my arms, heedless of Koro and Karen at the kitchen table, our interested audience. “Let me make your day beautiful. Let me make it right.”

Her eyes softened. “How am I supposed to argue with that?”

I smiled. “You’re not.” I gave her a little slap on the bum and a quick kiss on her sweet mouth and said, “That’ll be a good start to the marriage, eh.”

Karen said, “What, telling her not to argue? Talk about
totally
wrong.”

I smiled some more. “Nah. It won’t work. Pure wishful thinking.”

Hope gave me a shove and said, “Go, then. Come back with a license to marry me.”

Pity that nothing’s ever as easy as it seems.

As it turned out, there was only one person in front of me. He was in his seventies, though, and arguing about his rubbish collection rates, which made up for about three dog licenses.

Finally, though, he was leaving, still shaking his head and muttering under his breath, and it was my turn. I explained my errand, set the documents on the counter, and watched as the comfortably upholstered middle-aged Maori lady on the other side picked them up, scrutinized them one by one, began to type into her computer, and then returned to one of them and studied it again. The one I most wanted her to be done with.

“I don’t think this is in order, love,” she said at last.

“Of course it is,” I said. “It’s ancient history, more than twelve years old, and it’s in order.”

She turned it around to show me.

New Zealand

Decree of Dissolution

the heading read, with all the details beneath.

Completely in order. I ought to know.

“Here,” she said, pointing to the lower right corner. “Should be an embossed seal there, and it’s missing. Most important bit of the paper.”

“So somebody forgot to stamp it,” I said, holding onto my temper. “It must happen. It was done all right and tight.”

“Nobody forgets to stamp it,” she said. “You’re going to have to get a corrected copy before I can issue your license. Sorry, but I can’t. First rule of getting married, love. You can’t already be married to somebody else.”

I wanted to explode, but I didn’t. I took a deep breath and said, “I’m back in the homeland for a couple weeks. My fiancee’s waiting at my Koro’s house with my ring on her finger, ready for me to take her to Auckland to buy her a dress. This…” I pushed the paper back toward her. “It was done and dusted a dozen years ago. It may not have a seal, but it’s real. I should know. I paid for it. So—please. I’ve got a girl waiting, and I need to marry her in front of my whanau, so she’ll believe.”

I couldn’t believe I’d said all that, but I may as well have saved my breath, because she was shaking her head, looking genuinely sorry. “I can’t. I wish I could, but I can’t. Here.” She reached for a paper from a rack on the wall and handed it to me. “All you need to do is look it up online. It’ll be recorded. Then you bring the proof in here, and you’ll have your license.”

“Brilliant,” I said. “Could I ask you to look it up for me now?”

She glanced behind me, where a bloke was waiting, shifting from foot to foot and glaring at me.

“Please,” I added. I didn’t beg, and I was doing it anyway.

She said, “I can’t. You need to look up your own info. It’s all spelled out on the paper there.”

It didn’t matter whether I got the license today or tomorrow. The waiting period was three days, and I had six. All the same, I pushed it. “There’s nothing you can do? You sure?” A young mother wheeled a pushchair with a grizzling baby in it up behind the bloke, and the bloke sighed.

The clerk pushed my papers across the counter to me and said, “Sorry, love. I would if I could. Look it up, bring the proof back here to me, and you’ll have it. And congrats. Sounds like she’s a lucky girl.”

I stepped away. I had no choice. I walked out of the library, thought a moment, then turned around and went back inside.

I hadn’t brought my laptop, but libraries had Internet-connected computers, right? All I’d have to do was look it up, pay the money to print out the page, and I could be back in the queue again.

I never panicked at the first setback. That wasn’t me. Time to pull my head in.

A few minutes later, I sat at a long table in front of a computer monitor, consulted the paper, typed in the web address, and began to follow the instructions. I gave a passing thought to online security and shrugged it off. If the elderly fella in the corner reading his newspaper or the somewhat fragrant backpacker reading his email beside me were intent on stealing my identity, I’d have to risk it. I’d be on here for ten minutes, and then I’d be done.

It didn’t take ten minutes. Once I proved my identity and got into the records site itself, it took seconds.

A birth certificate, a certificate of marriage, and nothing else.

I
didn’t
swear under my breath. Instead, I controlled my heartbeat and my temper, went back to the previous page, and typed the query in again.

Two documents. And that was all.

There would be an explanation. A misspelling, something like that. I scrutinized the document again.

Certificate of Dissolution

It listed a place. Auckland. It gave a date and the parties’ names, both spelled correctly. Hemi Kahu Te Mana. And Anika Malia Cavendish.

A glitch,
I told myself. I put the document carefully back into its envelope, got up from the chair and shoved it back under the table without haste, walked out to the vestibule, stood next to a notice board full of colorful, thumbtacked notices and adverts, pulled out my phone, and rang my attorney.

“Hemi,” Walter Eagleton said. “How are you?”

I didn’t answer that. It wasn’t pertinent. “I’m in New Zealand,” I said, “and I need you to check into something for me straight away. Today. I got divorced here twelve—no, thirteen—years ago, and I can’t find a record of it.” I explained about the search and the seal, then said, “I’ll scan this paper and send it to you in the next fifteen minutes. I need the correct paperwork in my hands as soon as I can get it. Today, for preference. Tomorrow evening my time at the absolute latest.”

I didn’t tell him how to find it. I didn’t know, and anyway, that was what I paid him for.

He didn’t ask, and he also didn’t point out that it was Sunday evening in New York. Again—that was what I paid him for. “A clerical error, probably,” he said, echoing my thought. “If you’re sure that it happened.”

“Does anybody forget their divorce?”

“Did you actually appear in court?”

“No. I was living in the States. I had it done through an attorney. Simple procedure. It’s filed, you’re on the docket, it takes a month to get the paperwork, and I got it.”

“Attorney’s name?”

I had to concentrate to bring it up. My memory was nearly flawless, except when I wanted to forget something. “Martin Henderson,” I finally said. “Auckland.”

“Property settlement?” he asked.

“That’s handled separately from the divorce here, and anyway, neither of us had anything while we were married. Nothing to settle.”

“Got it. Send me that scan, and I’ll be back with you with more as soon as I know. Is there a reason this is coming up now?”

Walter knew I operated on a need-to-know basis. Unfortunately, there were heaps of things an attorney needed to know, and if he was asking, there was a reason.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m getting married on Saturday.”

“Right,” he said. “Then there are a number of things you probably need in addition to that documentation. A prenuptial agreement, for a start. An alteration to your trust, maybe, depending on the prenup. By Saturday? Could be tricky. Will you be back before then, or are we doing this remotely?”

“Remotely,” I said. “Get me that documentation, and we’ll discuss the rest later.”

Walter started to say something, checked himself, said, “Will do,” and rang off, and I rolled my head on my neck a couple times, lifted and lowered my shoulders, took another deep breath, set the matter into the “Delegated” pile, and rang Violet Renfrow in Auckland. And then I went home, collected Hope and Karen, and took them to visit Violet.