I Married the Man Who Rear-Ended Me in a Kroger Parking Lot, Six Months Later His Wife Called

Part 2: What Lauren Knew

I don’t remember letting her into my house.

I remember standing in the driveway with warm milk on my shoe and telling her my address before I’d fully decided to. I remember her saying she could be there in forty minutes. I remember going inside and sitting on the kitchen floor in front of the dishwasher because the floor felt like the only honest thing in the room.

Reagan came and sat on my foot.

The doorbell rang at 5:34.

Lauren Hollis was shorter than I expected. Dark hair pulled back. A gray sweatshirt from a 5K in Branson. She was carrying a manila folder and a bottle of white wine, and I don’t know which one made me want to cry harder.

“I wasn’t sure if you drank,” she said. “I brought it anyway.”

I let her in.

She sat at my kitchen table, the one Daniel had assembled on a Saturday in July while I made lemonade, and she put the folder down between us like she was pitching me on a mortgage.

“I’m going to show you things,” she said. “And you’re going to hate me for a little while. That’s okay.”

She opened the folder.

There was a marriage certificate. Daniel Wayne Hollis and Lauren Michelle Bergstrom, Christian County, Missouri, June 14, 2003. There were two birth certificates. Emma, 2005. Caleb, 2010. There was a mortgage statement for a house on Farm Road 174 in Rogersville with both their names on it.

There was a photo of the four of them at Silver Dollar City, taken this past summer, while Daniel had told me he was in Tulsa for a training.

“How long,” I said.

“How long has he been married to me? Twenty-two years.”

“How long have you known about me.”

She looked at her hands. “Fourteen months.”

I had been married eight.

“You knew before we got married.”

“I knew after. He told you we were getting divorced when you met, right? At the Kroger?”

I nodded.

“He told me the same thing about his marriage to the woman before me. When we started dating in 2001.” She smiled, and it was the worst smile I’ve ever seen on a person. “There was no woman before me. He’s been married to me since he was twenty. But that’s the story he tells. The just-getting-out-of-a-hard-marriage story. That’s the setup.”

“The setup for what.”

“For a certain kind of woman.”

I flinched.

“I don’t mean it like that,” she said quickly. “I mean, he looks for a specific type. Divorced. Late thirties, early forties. No kids. Lives alone. Has a job but not a huge social circle. Someone whose life has room in it.”

Someone like me.

Someone exactly like me.

“How many,” I said.

She hesitated.

“Lauren. How many.”

“You’re the third that I know about. Second that he married.”

I put my head down on the kitchen table.

“The first one was in 2015,” she said, quiet. “Her name was Jennifer. She was in Joplin. He was doing a lot of work out there for six months. That one didn’t become a marriage. He ended it when the project ended.”

“And the second.”

“Her name is Ashley. She’s in Rolla. He married her in 2020. She’s a nurse. They have a little house near the university.”

“He’s married to her *right now.*”

“He’s married to me right now. He’s also married to her. And he’s also married to you.” Lauren took a long breath. “Rebecca, I need you to understand. I didn’t come here to blow up your life. I came here because I’m about to blow up his, and I wanted you to have a head start.”

“You’re going to the police.”

“I’m going to the police on Monday. My lawyer says we have a felony bigamy case, and probably fraud, because he’s been using our joint checking account to pay part of your mortgage.”

I looked at her.

“He what.”

“Your house. In Nixa. He’s been paying about six hundred a month toward it out of our account. I flagged it in April. That’s when I started figuring out who you were.”

There was a long silence.

“Ashley doesn’t know yet,” she said. “I’m telling her tomorrow. I wanted you first because you’re the newest. He’s still, you know. In the honeymoon part with you.”

“He’s out of town right now,” I said. “He said he’s in Kansas City.”

She checked her phone.

“He’s at our house. I told him Caleb has a basketball scrimmage tonight.”

I laughed. It came out wrong.

“Do you want to see him?” she asked.

“See who?”

“Daniel. Tonight. Before Monday. Before it’s police and lawyers and none of us get to actually say anything.” She looked at me carefully. “I’ve thought about it a lot. I think we deserve one conversation where we’re the ones asking the questions.”

“We.”

“You. Me. Ashley, if she’s up for it by tomorrow. All three of us. At my house. Saturday.”

I stared at her.

“You’re inviting me to your house.”

“I’m inviting you to *our* house,” she said. “The one he’s been coming home to for twenty-two years. I want him to walk through the front door on Saturday night, and I want you to be sitting on the couch.”

I thought about the Panera. About his three-part laugh. About the way he’d painted the kitchen sage green because I’d pointed at a paint chip and shrugged.

I thought about a fourteen-year-old boy named Caleb I had never heard of.

“Yes,” I said.

Lauren nodded, once, like a woman closing a folder.

“There’s one more thing,” she said.

“What.”

“Ashley’s pregnant.”

She stood up, left the wine on my counter, and let herself out.

—