Chapter 4: The Glitch

*Catherine Vane.*

The letters were black, serifed, and official. They sat in the field marked *Spouse* as if they had always been there, defying ten years of memories, legal documents, and shared tax returns.

My breath hitched, a sharp, painful intake that made my ribs ache. I stared at the screen, waiting for the name to flicker, to change back to Elena. It didn't.

*Catherine Vane.*

Richard’s sister.

"This is ridiculous," I said aloud, my voice sounding thin and terrified in the empty kitchen. "It's a glitch. It's a database merging error."

I reached for the mouse, my hand trembling slightly. I clicked the *Edit* button next to the field.

Nothing happened. The cursor turned into a red circle with a slash through it.

I clicked again. Harder.

A tooltip popped up: *Field locked by Administrator. Source: Social Security Administration Master File.*

My stomach dropped, a sickening sensation of freefall. The SSA Master File wasn't something you could edit with a password and a smile. That was government-level data. Hard data.

I minimized the window and opened a new tab. I logged into the Vane Family Trust portal—a separate system entirely. If this was a glitch, it would be isolated to the insurance carrier.

I navigated to the beneficiary tab for the Trust.

*Primary Beneficiary: Richard Vane.*
*Secondary Beneficiary: Catherine Vane.*
*Relationship: Spouse.*

The room spun. I gripped the edge of the counter, the cold stone biting into my palms. It was everywhere. It wasn't a glitch. It was a pattern.

"Think, Elena," I whispered. "Think."

I had signed the marriage license. I had pictures of the wedding. We had filed joint taxes for a decade. The IRS didn't accept fake marriages.

Unless they weren't fake. Unless my marriage was the fake one.

I pulled up the digital copy of our marriage certificate from the cloud drive. I needed to see it. I needed to see the seal, the signatures, the proof that I wasn't losing my mind.

The file opened. There it was. *Richard Vane and Elena Rossi.* Dated June 14, 2012.

But then I looked closer at the file metadata. *Last Modified: Yesterday.*

Why was it modified yesterday?

I went back to the insurance portal. I had to fix this. If the bank saw "Catherine Vane" listed as spouse on a Key Man policy when the guarantor was "Elena Vane," they would flag it for fraud. They would freeze the accounts. The bridge loan would collapse.

I hit the *Override* button again. And again.

A chat window popped up in the corner of the screen. *Support Agent: Do you require assistance with your renewal?*

I typed furiously. *There is an error in the spousal designation. It lists my sister-in-law. I need to change it to myself.*

The three dots of the agent typing appeared immediately.

*Agent: I see the field you are referring to. That data is pulled directly from the certified copy of the marriage license uploaded to the secure vault on January 4, 2002.*

2002.

Ten years before I met Richard.

*Me: That's impossible. Richard Vane is my husband. We were married in 2012.*

*Agent: One moment. Let me check the file history.*

I waited, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. The silence of the house felt heavy, pressing in on me. The refrigerator hummed. A floorboard creaked upstairs—but no one was upstairs.

*Agent: The system shows a valid marriage certificate on file dated January 4, 2002, between Richard Vane and Catherine Vane. There is no record of a dissolution of marriage.*

No divorce.

If they were married in 2002... and never divorced...

Then my marriage in 2012 was void.

Bigamy.

The word floated in my mind, absurd and terrifying. Bigamy was something from soap operas, not my life. Not Richard. Richard, who couldn't lie about eating the last cookie without twitching.

But Richard hadn't built the trust structure. Eleanor had.

I typed again, my fingers stiff. *I am the Administrator. I am overriding this.*

I went back to the field. I forced the system into 'Manual Entry' mode, bypassing the auto-fill. I typed *Elena Vane*. I hit *Save*.

The screen flashed red. A siren-like beep emitted from the laptop speakers, loud enough to make me jump.

**CRITICAL ERROR 409: CONFLICT WITH FEDERAL RECORD. CANNOT OVERRIDE LEGAL SPOUSE ON FILE LINKED TO SSN.**