Through the narrow opening, Adrian stepped into view. Alive. In the same suit he’d bought for our wedding.
“I don’t want anything going wrong today,” he said.
Three months earlier I’d stood at his funeral. Now he was alive, his mother knew, and they’d let me grieve him.
I ran to the restroom and cried. Then I picked up my florist badge, because I suddenly knew what I was going to do.
He’d faked his death. And I was the beneficiary on his life insurance policy — which meant Adrian hadn’t just broken my heart. He’d made me part of a federal crime.
And I had the paperwork to prove I never knew.
PART 2
Let me explain the insurance, because it’s the thing that turned Adrian’s cruelty into Adrian’s undoing.
A year before the wedding, Adrian had insisted we take out life insurance policies on each other. “Responsible adults do this,” he’d said. “God forbid anything happens, I want you taken care of.” I’d thought it was sweet. Practical. A sign he was serious about our future.
I was the beneficiary on his policy. A large one — larger than made sense for a man of his income, though I hadn’t questioned it at the time, because you don’t audit the romantic gestures of the man you’re marrying.
When he “died” in that closed-casket accident six weeks before our wedding, that policy should have paid out to me.
It hadn’t. Not yet. The claim was still processing — insurance companies are slow, and a death that convenient, that close to a wedding, gets extra scrutiny. I’d been too deep in grief to think about the money. I’d told the insurer I wasn’t ready to deal with it, and they’d left the claim open.
