Author’s Note: So, it’s Wednesday, and I figured I’d work the words from Three Word Wednesday into both of my potential serials. This is the historical fiction, and it starts with “Identity Theft.”

The details of what I mean by potential serials are here. If you want to see more of either, just let me know.

This week’s words: argue, lick, and squint.

Robert turned the photograph around in his fingers, as if looking at the backing with the name of the printer would make the image disappear. He knew that it wouldn’t, and he knew that he could not explain it, not to his satisfaction or anyone else’s.

“I think you need have no further dealings with this woman. She is clearly a fraud,” his father said. He reached for a napkin with one hand while licking the last of the pastry off the fingers of the other.

For such an affluent snob, there were times when his father acted like a complete boar.

“Father, the fact that someone married this woman using my name—and with a bit more than a passing resemblance to me—means that I must have more dealings with her. I must find out who is impersonating me and blackening my name and yours.”

“Rubbish. The woman’s lying, and you need to ignore this foolishness. She wants money, that’s all. If you insist on paying her, there’ll be no end to it. She’ll always want more. Best to leave it be. You can prove you weren’t there. That’s all you need.”

Robert didn’t know how his father could be so indifferent to the matter. He would have expected outrage, the kind of thundering that accompanied anyone’s defiance of his edicts, but the old man was calm. Too calm. He would not be argued with—nothing was to change his opinion. He was right, and no one would say otherwise—not in his hearing, at least.

He rose, cradling his bad arm and taking the photograph with him. His mother would be in with her friends from her sewing circle, but he had to ask her if she recognized the man. His father had already told him not to ask her, but he didn’t care what his father thought. The man was behaving like an idiot, and while he might believe that this business with someone stealing Robert’s name was nothing, Robert could not agree.

He did not think the woman was lying. She’d never asked for money. She’d wanted answers, and she wanted a divorce if he didn’t want to support her, but there was no demand for any sort of money. If she was trying to trick him—no, he could not think it likely, not with the way she’d written. She seemed angry, and rightfully so if she had been treated in such a manner. How could a man do such a thing? How could he marry a woman using a name not his own and then abandon her? What sort of a man had done this?

He glanced at the photograph again, not sure what to think of that face. The scoundrel gave no indication of his malicious nature. Indeed, he looked upon his bride with what Robert would have called love if he did not know otherwise.

“Mother, forgive me for interrupting, but I think we should discuss this photograph I received.”

“Yes, dear,” she said, putting down her project. She had always been so dutiful that he wondered sometimes if she thought at all. She only ever seemed to parrot his father’s opinions, and he’d hated that bird when he was younger. “What is it?”

He handed her the picture, and she squinted at it. “Are these friends of yours?”

“No, that is the man who stole my name and tricked the woman with it.”

She gave him back the photograph. “I do not recognize either of them, and your father says that it is nothing. You should listen to him and forget it.”

Robert shook his head. “Father is wrong. This is not some kind of game, and even if it were only a scheme on her part, it merits a reaction. Is there some reason why Father would not want to do something about it? Some sort of—”

“Your father says it is not worth dignifying, and that must be your opinion as well.”

“I am afraid it never will be,” Robert told her. He glared at his arm, hating himself for the weakness in it. If he were fit, he could seek some sort of employment and free himself from the need for his family’s money. He had thought, should he survive the war, that the army might be such an occupation, but his career there was cut short, and now he was more dependent than ever.

That did not matter. Cripple or not, he had to see to the woman’s letter. He was determined to find this thief even if no one else was.

Author’s Note: A bit more of the historical to help people decide.

“She’s not your wife.”

“Of course not. I’m not married,” Robert said, and then he frowned, wondering if he was hallucinating again. He had seen some horrible things on the front lines, and he’d seen some impossible things as well, the ones that haunted his dreams and even at times his waking hours. Shell-shock, they called it, but he dared not voice its name, not when he stood to lose so very much by the mere admission of such a malady. “What do you mean she’s not my wife?”

“She writes as though she was,” his father went on, and Robert felt himself succumb to old hatred, angry enough to hurt the other man. He did not want to do it, but he did not know that he could control himself as he once had. His father had been far too comfortable with the role of family patriarch, tending to treat the family and all their holdings as his private empire, never having much tolerance for those who would think for themselves.

“You read my mail again?”

“This letter alleges that you and she spent a rather significant amount of time together. It would seem that she believed you courted her.”

“Father, I have only recently left the hospital, and before that I was on the front line. I am not courting anyone, but even if I were, it is no affair of yours. Give me my letter.”

“You are in no place to order me about.”

“Tampering with the mail is illegal, and that includes opening my letters,” Robert said, using his good arm to snatch the papers from his father. The old man glared at him, and he wondered how long it was before another threat of disinheritance came. He would not care, not if he were in good health and mental state, but at present, he did not think that he could afford to annoy his father, not to the point he would have before he was drafted.

He sat down, reading over the words, starting over again and again, as though the script would change. Nothing altered—not a word, not a loop, not the slant of that feminine hand—and he found himself shaking his head. “Impossible.”

“Then you deny knowing this woman.”

“I already said that.” Robert shifted in his seat, placing the papers in his lap so that he could use his one arm to maneuver the one that was half-dead onto the chair where it could remain until he regained feeling in it. He had dreams sometimes of the surgeons telling someone to amputate, that the arm was gone, but then he always heard his father’s voice refusing to let it happen.

No son of his could be a cripple.

“Then explain to me how she wrote you as though she knew everything about you. These details of your childhood—”

“I do not know how she came by them, but unless I wanted to be in front of an execution squad for desertion, I would not have been able to be with this woman. You know that. I know that. Have the army send you my records if you need further proof. I am certain you have the money to get them,” Robert said, shaking his head. The part that bothered him was the reference that his father had pointed out—a story he supposed could be common to many boys with his heritage.

He had always hated bearing the same name as his father, though everyone called him RJ or Boss, and he’d gone around trying to convince everyone not to call him Robert or John or Winston for over two years before he understood how much influence his father had. Still, that could hardly be that unique of a tale.

Other boys must have given false names as a lark if nothing else.

He gathered the letter up in his hand, forcing himself out of the chair. “I will write back to her. If this is some kind of plan to trap me for money, it will not work. However, if there is someone using my name to take advantage of women, I must find him and stop him.”

His father snorted. “As if you could do anything to anyone in your condition.”

“You rather tempt me to prove otherwise, Father. I think it is best that I leave now.”