…my savings. All of it. Two weeks after our wedding, he disappeared.”
Her name was Sandra. In 1999, she’d married a charming man named “Michael Grant” in a small ceremony two states away. He had the same scar. A month later, her $140,000 inheritance was gone, and so was he. The police told her “Michael Grant” didn’t exist.
My husband’s name was Michael Grant. In 1999, he’d been “traveling for work” a lot.
I didn’t go home that night. Sandra drove me to her house, made me tea and showed me everything she’d kept for twenty-seven years: the wedding photos, the police report, a newspaper clipping about two other women in nearby states with the same story.
The next morning, I logged into our joint bank account. Two days earlier, Michael had moved $60,000 of my retirement savings into an account I didn’t recognize. The woman he’d been texting at dinner was named on it.
Sandra and I went to the police together. A detective reopened the old cases. Fingerprints from Sandra’s 1999 file matched my husband’s. He’d married at least three other women while married to me, using different documents each time, and left each of them with nothing.
He’d stayed with me for thirty-two years. The detective thought it was because I’d inherited my parents’ house. He’d been waiting for the right moment to sell it.
Michael was arrested at the other woman’s apartment a week later. My $60,000 was recovered. Sandra’s money never was.
I filed for divorce. Sandra and I have dinner every Thursday now. We call ourselves “the first and the last Mrs. Grant.” She says she stopped her car that night because she saw a woman walking in the rain the way she once had. I’m glad she did.
