…the same date. In another state. He’s planning to marry both of them.”
I sat down in the boutique. My daughter, Lily, was supposed to marry her fiancé, Daniel, in three weeks.
I drove home and put the photograph on the kitchen table in front of my husband, John. He sighed. “I was hoping you wouldn’t see that until after.”
John had become suspicious of Daniel two months ago. He’d noticed that Daniel never talked about his family, never invited anyone to the wedding and always had excuses for being out of town. So John hired a private investigator. The investigator discovered Daniel was engaged to two other women in two other states, both with wealthy parents, both planning weddings within weeks of each other. He’d already taken money from all three families “for the honeymoon.”
The young woman in the photograph was Elizabeth Morgan, one of the other brides. John had found her and told her the truth. She’d come to meet him, and together they’d planned how to expose Daniel. The photo was Elizabeth trying on Lily’s dress, to show that she and Lily were the same size, so a decoy could stand in Lily’s place at the altar if needed.
“I didn’t want to tell you or Lily until I was certain,” John said. “I knew it would break her heart.”
We told Lily that night together. She cried until morning. Then she said, very quietly, “Thank you, Dad.”
Daniel was arrested two weeks later on fraud charges after the third bride’s family went to the police with John’s evidence. Lily never wore her wedding dress.
A year later, she met a kind, quiet veterinarian named Sam. He introduced her to his entire family on their third date. When they got engaged, he came to our house and asked John’s permission first. John said yes. Then he asked Sam for a list of every place he’d ever lived. Sam laughed and wrote it down.
