PART 2 — Website: The Name I’d Never Heard
(~530 words)
Inside, nestled in yellowed tissue paper, was a driver’s license.
My husband’s face looked back at me — younger, thinner, maybe twenty-five years old in the photo. But the name printed beside it wasn’t Mark Coleman.
It read: Daniel Whitmore.
I picked it up like it might burn me. Turned it over. Turned it back. Stared at the address — a town in Ohio I’d never heard him mention in fifteen years of marriage.
Underneath the license was a photograph, soft at the corners from being handled too many times. A wedding photo. My husband — younger, unmistakably him — standing beside a woman in a simple white dress, laughing at something outside the camera’s frame. A woman I had never seen. Never heard of. Never been told existed.
Under that, a second photo: the same woman, now holding a little girl, maybe four or five years old, on her hip. The child had Mark’s exact smile.
My stomach turned over.
