Unlawfully Wed

Martha stared at Alex for nearly a solid minute before she fully grasped who she was looking at. "You're Alexander!" she exclaimed, dropping her book on the ground and running over to him. She threw her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek. Alex went rigid in her arms, entirely unsure of what to do. He had never been a huge fan of affection, other than with George, Eliza, or John, but this felt even more damning than a simple hug. This was the wife of the love of his life, then woman who had everything Alex had ever wanted. How could he show that affection back?

Martha must have sensed Alex's discomfort, as she pulled away almost immediately and gave him a smile that was apologetic at first but quickly grew into something more. She grabbed his hand and pulled him up onto the porch, ushering him onto porch swing before telling JP to go and make them some lemonade.

Once Alex was seated comfortably on the swing, Martha sat next to him, pulling her legs up beneath her bottom and studying him. Alex studied her as well, shocked to see how different aspects of her appearance looked in person compared to her pictures. She had cut her hair into a chin-length bob with blunt bangs, and had dyed it a chocolate-brown, her natural red barely peaking through on the strands that she had missed. She had not been large in all of her photographs with George, but she had obviously lost a lot of weight, her jawline chiseled and her cheekbones sharp above the hollow of her cheeks. It also looked like she was wearing colored contacts to hide her natural color, although whomever she purchase them from must had made them cheaply, as Alex could see the differentiation between each individual highlight and shadow on the lens.

Martha also seemed to be almost blissfully happy. "Oh, I'm so happy that you came to visit me, Alexander. George has told me all about you over the years, and he promised me he would bring you to see me after all the hype died down, but I didn't think I would see you this soon! I must say, I wasn't expecting it to be JP to bring you down, either, but I won't look the gift horse in the mouth. It's just so lovely to finally meet you."

Alex coughed uncomfortably, rocking on his feet nervously. "Uhm, it's good to meet you, too."

"Good" wasn't an honest way of describing Alex's feelings on the situation. He had spent so long catching snippets of George and Martha's lives together that it seemed almost like Martha was part of a fairy tale, and after believing her to be dead for the past two months, it felt like he was talking to a ghost.

Martha continued on without pause, her happiness becoming more and more exuberant the longer that she sat next to Alex. "How is George doing? I know when we finally made this plan, he was so nervous about trying to start a relationship with you again--"

"Wait, what?" Alex interrupted, his eyes going wide at Martha's words. "What plan? What are you talking about?"

Martha's brows furrowed and she looked at Alex as if he had twelve heads. "Our plan to get our lives back." She paused and looked at Alex expectedly, like she was waiting for him to know exactly what it was that she was talking about. When Alex didn't answer, she looked even more concerned. "George didn't tell you?"

Alex took a deep breath and shook his head. "Martha, all he's told me is that he didn't kill you. I didn't even know you were still alive until JP showed up at my office today and told me that he had some information on George's case--"

"What case? What's going on?" Now she looked concerned rather than excited. "What's wrong with George?"

"JP didn't tell you?"

Martha glanced over as the boy in question came back outside. She stared at him with a look of scrutiny before turning back to Alex. "Alexander, I have not heard anything from George since we went our separate ways. We agreed on letting six months pass before we began to communicate again, just in case anyone was tracking us. The last time I saw or heard from him was after he brought me here."

"And you've just been living here for the past five months?"

"Yes, but Alexander, that's not important right now. What is George's case for? What are you defending him for?" She looked up as JP held a glass of lemonade in her direction. "Thank you, JP."

Alex took a glass, as well, before saying, "Martha, George is in jail. They think that he murdered you in cold blood."

He winced as Martha dropped her lemonade, the glass shattering and embedding itself in the skin of his ankle. The lemonade, still ice cold, splashed against the cuts, but the cooling sensation of the liquid was counteracted by the sting of the lemon juice.

Martha's eyes widened, and her jaw dropped as she took in what Alex had said. "They *what*? But, we planned everything so perfectly! Everyone was supposed to think that I committed suicide, and that George, my grieving husband, moved back to the city to ease the ache of his broken heart. No one was supposed to think that he was responsible! We planned everything down to the way that he'd 'find' me. What went wrong?"

Alex began to answer, but JP cut her off. "It's my fault," he said, setting the jug of lemonade on the ground and leaning against the wall, his arms crossed over his stomach.

Alex felt his stomach drop, and Martha spun around, looking furious. "What did you do, JP? You knew the plan, too!"

JP looked ashamed. "I know, Mom. It wasn't intentional. I took your note to the house and put it next to your bed, just like you told me to, but I made a mistake. I--" he paused, swallowing and moving his hand up to ruffle the back of his hair, "I told Jack and Mick what was going on, and I asked them to help me move some things around the house to make it look like you had gone somewhere to die. They were cool when they wed helping me, but I guess they saw a bit too much that they liked, because they broke back in that night and destroyed your house. They stole all of your jewelry and broke into the safe. My wallet had fallen out when we were moving things and I went back to get it. I saw them running away from the house as soon as I pulled into the driveway, and I just--I got scared. I convinced Natalia to give me some of the bagged blood she had from your last donation, and I put drops around to make it look like something had happened."

"Why didn't you tell me George had been arrested? You didn't think that would be a little bit important for me to hear?"

"I didn't want to upset you, mom, you have enough to worry about--"

"Save it." Martha held a hand up to cut him off. Her cheeks were flushed dark-red in anger, and she didn't say anything else before standing up and talking Alex's hand. JP didn't fight back, either.

Martha dragged Alex through the kitchen and up a flight of stairs, taking him into a bedroom and slamming and locking the door. She pushed him down onto the bed and sat down beside him, grabbing one of the pillows and letting out a scream into it. Alex couldn't do anything but watch, his mouth going dry and his palms itching as he realized that all of this could have been completely avoided if JP had just done exactly what his mother and George had planned, whatever that may be.

Alex waited for Martha to lower the pillow back to her lap before scooting over to her, putting a hand on her knee and squeezing it lightly. Martha began to clench the pillow, her hands going white and her veins popped the harder that she squeezed. There were tears brimming her eyes, and her shoulders were trembling from the intensity of her emotions. Alex moved closer again and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close and holding her until she calmed down again.

"Why do they think George 'killed' me? Did JP's friends really make the house look that awful?"

"Yes, they did. I've seen the crime scene images, and Martha . . . it looked really bad. Besides, the last time George was seen before you went missing he was heavily intoxicated and clearly pissed off at someone on the phone, and there was blood on his clothing when the detectives found him in a motel room."

"Of course there was blood on his shirt; I cut my hand when we were trying to move the furniture around so I could stay here." She thrust her hand into Alex's line of sight. "See? I have the scar still and everything."

Alex glanced at the scar and nodded. He though that it looked older than just a few months, but he was a lawyer, not a doctor. "I see."

"Why didn't George just tell them that he didn't do it? He was well-liked around town; I'm sure there was *someone* who would be willing to vouch for his character."

"He tried, but no one believed him. I guess he was having trouble thinking of a story, because he kept just saying that he couldn't remember."

Martha shook her head. "Idiot. We planned out what we would say if something went wrong, too. How did he contact you, if he's locked up?"

"He wrote me a letter, asking me to come and see him, and to be his lawyer. He said he didn't trust anyone besides me to see the truth." He pulled his arm away from Martha's shoulder and moved further down on the bed. "You don't have to tell me, Martha, but why did you do it? What happened that made you both so miserable you tried to fake your own suicide?" He hesitated before saying softly, "George said that you've tried to kill yourself for real more than once.

Martha looked taken aback for half a second before she shrugged. Alex expected her to look sheepish, but she had no qualms about the morality of her decision. "If I hadn't faked my suicide, I would have ended up trying again, for real. I just couldn't do it any more. I've lived my whole life as Martha Curtis, daughter of Myra and Thomas Curtis. My name has been recognized every where that I go. I had hoped when George and I got married that the name-dropping would stop, but it only became worse. It played a big part in my depression, and I *had* to think of something to stop it. George just happened to want to help."

"So you faked your death? I'm sorry, Martha, but I still just don't understand."

Martha stared at Alex in silence before dropping her gaze to the bed. "Looking back on it, it was a stupid plan, but I was desperate. I was paranoid about every thing I did, and I felt like I was living inside a painting instead of just being me. I thought that killing that image would let me be whoever I wanted again. I hated what it would do to my sister, but to my parents, to the family name? I didn't care. It was just all too much."

"Why didn't George and you move somewhere away from all of your family drama, start somewhere new?" Alex was grasping at straws. No matter how many reasons Martha gave to defend her decision, Alex still couldn't fathom someone faking their own death. "There were so many options you two could have chosen. You didn't have to be the person that your parents wanted you to be. You could have made your name into something else."

Martha looked skeptical. Alex sighed. He had been in enough arguments, both legal and not, to know when the other side's stance could not be budged. "Okay, fine. I suppose I can imagine why you did it. But how does George fit into all of this? Was he really okay with being married to a dead woman?"

"We, well, we got a divorce before this whole charade began. We realized that 'til death do we part' had to *literally* end in death, and I wanted George to be free. I wanted him to be able to come back to you without anything holding him back."

This time, it was Martha putting *her* hand on Alex's knee in comfort. "Alex, George loves you. You were all he could talk about after we got married."

"Then why'd he marry you instead of me, huh? Clearly that's not how George feels about his feelings for me," Alex snapped. The look of comfort on Martha's face turned to hurt, and she pulled her hand back. Alex began to feel bad. "Look, Martha, I just meant--"

"Alex, I know that George broke your heart when he left you, but leaving broke his, too. I don't know if he ever mentioned me when you were together, but we had been friends, once, when we were younger. We stayed in touch over the years, and when JP's father died a few months after George left you--well, we were both lonely, and grieving, and we decided to give a relationship a shot. It didn't take long for us to realize that there wasn't any romantic feelings there, but we had been friends for so long that we decided we were better off being miserable together than being miserable apart."

Martha got up off the bed and held her hand out to Alex. "Come on. I want to show you something." She waited for Alex to reach out to her. Once he had, she pulled him up and led him out of the room and down the hallway into a small office that was next to the bathroom and another bedroom. Alex followed her through the doorway and over to the plush, olive-green couch. He sat down and sink into the cushions, the over-fluffed cushions groaning as they caved under his weight.

Martha let him get comfortable before she went over to the bookcase. She stood on her tip toes and reached into the top shelf to grab a thick, leather-bound book. She pulled it down and held it against her chest as she walked back to the couch and sat down next to Alex.

"Here," she said, turning the book around and putting it on Alex's lap. "It's yours."

Martha's words made Alex's stomach tie itself in knots. He opened the book skeptically, biting down on his lip to keep himself from gasping as he realized what he was looking at.

There, on the first page, were the words: "To my Alexander. Happy anniversary, sweetheart. I love you." It was dated two weeks before Alex proposed to George, the numbers shimmering above the page in an embossed red glitter. Below the picture was an image of George and Alex sitting on a bench in the park, George's Brittany, Rivera, sitting on the ground in front of them. Angelica was sitting to Alex's right and was leaning against his back, and Phillip was next to George, Rivera's leash in his hand. The children couldn't have been any older than seven or eight,baby fat still puffing out their cheeks and their hair thin and straight from where it was pressed against their foreheads.

Alex ran his fingers over the picture before turning to the next page, his eyes feeling hot as he read a journal entry that George must have made early on in their relationship. There were pictures of them one dates, and even a few grainy selfies that they had taken on Alex's ancient flip phone years before.

As Alex flipped through the pages, he was struck by all the memories George and he had created together. In the book was movie stubs, letters, pressed flowers, anything and everything that reminded George of Alex.

The second half of the book, however, had a different vibe than the first half. George must have had empty pages, or he had taken the images out, as everything began to speak to Alex's accomplishments as a lawyer and the things that he had done in his personal life after the break up. There were newspaper clippings and web articles, Alex's business card and even a few newsletter sections about the things that Phillip and Angelica had done in school.

It was obvious that George had spent an incredible amount of time working on putting the book together, and by the time that Alex was done looking at it, he was fighting back tears. All those years thinking that George didn't care, wondering if he ever really loved him, were shoved to the side as the depth of George's love for him ran clear.

When Alex finished looking through the book he held it back out to Martha, giving her a small smile and wiping at his eyes. "Thank you for showing me that," he said, pulling his shirt sleeve down over his palm and using that to dry his tears. "That was beautiful."

Martha nodded. "He's spent so much time over the years looking back on the life you two had together and seeing what an amazing man you've become. He might not have said it yet, or maybe he never will, but he's proud of you and everything you've done. You've really made a life for yourself." She put the book on the top and stood up. "You can keep looking at things in here, but I am going to go start getting ready and fix myself a snack. We have a long drive ahead of us, you know." She reached out and ruffled his hair. "Let's bring me back to life."