Chapter 8

The next morning, Julian dragged me to the courthouse before I'd had coffee.

But when he looked at the marriage license, the name on my documents — Lily Harrington — made his face go dark with dissatisfaction.

"I should have left your name as Ivy."

"Ivy was the name Elaine gave me. I was always Lily, back in the orphanage."

He went quiet for a moment. I looked at him.

"Wait." I narrowed my eyes. "Did you make my new ID say I'm twenty?"

Julian developed an urgent interest in his phone.

Back at the townhouse, I sat down with my textbooks to work through ten years of missed material. The security alarm went off.

I checked the camera feed.

A small girl was trying — laboriously, determinedly — to climb over the garden wall.

Her face was red. Her movements were clumsy and too slow for someone trying to be stealthy.

The security guard asked if I wanted him to intervene. I shook my head.

She was nine years old. She was just looking for Julian.

The girl dropped into the garden, spotted the open front door, and crept inside with great suspicion. When she saw me in the living room, she stopped and drew herself up with the seriousness of someone twice her age.

"Who are you?"

I smiled. "Julian's... wife."

Her eyes went huge.

"That's a lie. He can't marry you. I'm his fiancée. Mom said when I'm twenty, we're getting married. And I'm leaving for school abroad tomorrow, so I came to tell him to wait for me."

She called him Julian too.

"Who's your mother?" I asked.

She lifted her chin. "None of your business. Get out of Julian's house. You don't belong here."

I set my textbook aside, brought out my Nintendo Switch, and slid a plate of pizza across the table.

"Why don't we play for a while and wait for him to come back?"

She sat down with the air of someone granting a tremendous favor.

After a round or two, I asked casually: "What's your name?"

"Sophia," she said. "Sophia Harrington."