Chapter 4 - The Wife Before Me
By noon, Naomi had stopped calling my situation a divorce case.
“We're dealing with potential fraud,” she said.
That sentence changed everything.
She contacted a forensic document examiner.
My father contacted the trust attorney.
The lender opened an internal investigation.
And I did something Jason apparently never expected me to do.
I stopped talking to him completely.
Silence frightened him.
His messages became less controlled.
Rachel, you're misunderstanding.
Then:
Amber manipulated this.
Then:
Your father is turning you against me.
And finally:
If lawyers get involved, everybody loses.
That message almost made me smile.
Everybody rarely says “everybody” when everybody is innocent.
At 1:15 p.m., Amber texted a photograph.
I nearly deleted it.
Then I looked.
It showed Jason standing outside a courthouse.
He looked younger.
Maybe twenty-five.
Beside him was a woman I had never seen.
Amber's message read:
Ask him who Rebecca is.
Naomi searched the name before I could reply.
We didn't have a last name.
But courthouse marriage indexes were public enough to narrow.
Jason Miller had not always been Jason Miller.
Eight years earlier, a man with Jason's date of birth had used the name Jason Cole.
Same middle name.
Same parents.
Same birth county.
And Jason Cole had married Rebecca Sanderson in Travis County.
We found no divorce record under that name.
I stared at Naomi.
“That isn't possible.”
“It’s possible the divorce was filed somewhere else.”
“But why change his last name?”
She kept searching.
Jason's original birth certificate showed Miller.
At twenty-one, he legally changed it to Cole.
At twenty-six, he changed it back.
No explanation.
The photograph Amber sent had been taken during the Cole years.
“Call her,” Naomi said.
“Amber?”
“No. Rebecca.”
We found her through a small interior-design business in Austin.
I called from Naomi’s phone.
A woman answered.
“Rebecca Sanderson Design.”
“My name is Rachel Bennett.”
Silence.
Then:
“Is this about Jason?”
My heart stopped.
She knew immediately.
“Yes.”
Rebecca exhaled.
“I wondered when he'd do it again.”
Again.
Naomi wrote the word on a legal pad and underlined it.
I put Rebecca on speaker.
She told us Jason had married her when she was twenty-four.
They had been together less than two years.
He was charming.
Dependable.
Her family adored him.
Sound familiar.
Rebecca's parents had helped them buy a house.
Very familiar.
Six months after the courthouse marriage, Jason convinced her to invest savings into a real-estate partnership.
Then he refinanced their home.
“He said we were renovating rentals.”
My stomach twisted.
“What happened?”
“Money disappeared.”
“How much?”
“About two hundred thousand.”
“Did he forge anything?”
Rebecca laughed bitterly.
“He forged everything.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“What happened to the marriage?”
“One morning I found him with another woman.”
Every hair on my arms rose.
“In your house?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“She said her name was Danielle.”
Not Amber.
Rebecca continued.
“I left. Jason told everyone I had abandoned the marriage. Thirty-two days later, he changed the locks.”
Thirty-two days.
The spreadsheet said I needed to vacate for thirty.
“Did you divorce?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“New Mexico.”
That explained why Naomi hadn't found it immediately.
Rebecca sent the decree.
The marriage had legally ended.
So Jason wasn't a bigamist.
Somehow, that didn't make me feel better.
“Why didn't you report the fraud?”
“I tried.”
Jason produced documents showing Rebecca had authorized everything.
She couldn't afford years of litigation.
Her parents helped her settle.
She walked away from the house.
Jason disappeared soon afterward.
“Do you know Linda Miller?”
“His mother?”
“Yes.”
Rebecca went quiet.
“She handled the company.”
“Cedar Ridge?”
“No.”
“What company?”
“Back then it was called Blue Mesa.”
Same structure.
Different name.
Jason and his mother had done this before.
Then Rebecca asked:
“Did he use your friend?”
I froze.
“What friend?”
“He likes someone close to the woman. Somebody she trusts.”
Naomi and I exchanged a look.
“How do you know?”
“Because Danielle wasn't random.”
Rebecca’s voice became quiet.
“She was my cousin.”
I stopped breathing.
Jason hadn't invented a new method for me.
He had repeated an old one.
Then Rebecca sent another photograph.
Jason.
Linda.
Rebecca.
May you like
And standing beside them was a nineteen-year-old Amber Collins.
The picture had been taken six years before Jason supposedly met me.
