REMEMBER US by Glenna Sinclair Page A

closet. I left the room quietly, closing the door with as much care as possible.
    I needed to talk to Philip. I needed to know if my memories were playing games with me.
    My whole world turned upside down when I caught Xander with those papers—papers with Grant Wallace’s signature on them—and heard the story he had to tell.

Chapter 2
     
    Xander-Six Months Ago…
    I walked into the bedroom to find her taking her clothes out of the closet and piling them on the bed. My heart was in my throat as I tried to explain that the snafu at the county clerk’s office was easily remedied. We could still get married and live out our dreams. I was hanging on to that notion.
    “Harley, it’s a mistake. I’ll get it cleared up, and we’ll get our marriage license just like we planned.”
    “I don’t think I want to marry a man who would lie to me.”
    “It wasn’t a lie.”
    “It was an omission. That’s the same thing.”
    “You told me not to tell you. Do you remember that?”
    She tossed a handful of clothes on the bed before she turned to me, her hands on her hips.
    “You are not blaming this on me!”
    “You didn’t want to know about my past; you didn’t want to know about the women in my life.”
    “I wasn’t talking about marriages! You made me believe that I was the first woman in your life whom you wanted to marry, but now I found out that you were married before—”
    “To a friend! To someone who needed help escaping a bad situation. It was not a love match.”
    “And I’m supposed to believe that?”
    “Yes. Because you love me and you trust me.”
    “How can I trust you when you lied to me about something so important?”
    “You’ve got to stop, Harley,” I said, grabbing her arms and pulling her over to the bed. I only wanted to force her to sit, but she fought back and tried to pull away. She ripped at my arms and tore at my shirt. The papers fell out in a shower of insanity. I’d forgotten about them; I’d forgotten the most dangerous thing I’d ever done because of the threat of losing the only thing that had ever mattered to me.
    She went still as she watched the last of them fall.
    “What the…?”
    I bent to grab them, but she’d already knelt, grabbing a few incriminating pieces of paper before I could stop her.
    “Where did you get these?”
    I tried to take them from her, but she held them so tightly that they would have torn if I’d continued to fight her. So I picked up the others and stood, crossing the room as I tried to figure out what to say.
    “This one has Grant’s signature on it.”
    I knew that. That’s why I took it.
    “And this one…is that your mom’s signature? Xander? What’s going on?”
    I could hear the shock and disbelief in her voice. I wished I’d felt the same when I realized just how deeply involved they were. But I couldn’t, because I really wasn’t surprised.
    I slid the folder out from under my shirt where I’d thought sticking it into the top of my pants would keep it secure—like I was some sort of spy from the 1950s. I had the same information on a flash drive in my pocket, but those didn’t have signatures on them. They said they needed signatures, the one time in this automated society when an electronic signature wouldn’t do.
    I tossed it all onto the low table in front of the television and sat heavily on the loveseat.
    “It’s complicated.”
    “I’m not going anywhere.”
    I had never wanted to tell her; I never wanted to get her involved. But it was becoming more and more obvious that there was no other way.
    “I always knew that Grant skirted that line, the line between right and wrong. I knew a lot of his business dealings were questionable. But, you know, that’s the way it is with lawyers in this town.”
    “But these…” Harley waved the papers in the air in front of me. “These are—”
    “I know. I found out about this a year ago.”
    It was a new client. His name was Randall Thomas, and he owned a