Chương 14
One lemon Band-Aid around my thumb.
A blue teddy bear tucked among the stems.
My baby moved inside me.
This time the flutter was unmistakable.
I placed my palm over it.
The wedding was over.
The rest had only begun.
By three that afternoon, I was sitting barefoot at Jenna’s kitchen table in my wedding dress while Paul changed passwords from a legal pad and Robert spoke to Whitmore’s chief financial officer on speakerphone.
Jenna had covered the chair with a beach towel because she did not trust white silk near marinara sauce.
Nobody had eaten the reception lunch except Robert, who had brought two containers of short rib with him because, according to him, scandal was no reason to waste good beef.
My veil was folded over the back of a chair.
The blue teddy bear sat beside the salt shaker.
Every time I looked at it, I heard Grant’s voice instead of the heartbeat it had been meant to hold.
Paul asked me for the password to an old investment portal.
I gave it to him.
Jenna looked up from the sink.
“That is the same password you used in college.”
“It is not.”
“It literally contains the name of your freshman-year cat.”
“Professor Pickles was memorable.”
Robert looked away from the phone.
“You named a cat Professor Pickles?”
“Dad did.”
“That explains it.”
For ten seconds, the room felt normal.
Then the CFO’s voice came through the speaker.
“We found the Marston emails.”
Robert stopped chewing.
I put down my water.
“How many?”
“Seven threads involving Grant.”
My stomach tightened.
“Was my name used?”
“Yes.”
The CFO hesitated.
“He represented himself as acting with your knowledge.”
Paul reached for his pen.
“Any commitments?”
“Nothing binding.”
I closed my eyes.
Relief came first.
Then anger followed it.
Not because disaster had been avoided.
Because avoiding disaster had depended on Grant being unable to complete what he had started.
The CFO continued.
“He discussed using Lakeview as part of a collateral package, but Marston asked for documentation he never provided.”
Robert looked at me.
Paul wrote something down.
I stared at the teddy bear.
“So he was trying.”
“Yes.”
The CFO sounded uncomfortable.
“I’m sorry, Claire.”
“Don’t be.”
I swallowed.
“Just preserve everything.”
“We already locked the relevant files and suspended his guest credentials.”
“Good.”
When the call ended, nobody spoke for a while.
Jenna opened a cabinet and took out four mismatched mugs.
“It is three fifteen.”
Paul looked at her.
“Yes.”
“That means coffee is medicinal.”
Robert nodded solemnly.
Paul said, “I’m not sure that is how medicine works.”
“Then don’t drink any.”
He accepted a mug.
My phone remained facedown in the middle of the table.
Airplane mode was off now, but notifications had been muted.
Paul had insisted we preserve incoming messages.
He also insisted I not read most of them.
That lasted forty minutes.
I picked up the phone while he was reviewing a document with Robert.
Grant had sent seventeen messages.
The first was furious.
The fourth was defensive.
The eighth said he loved me.
The eleventh blamed Natalie.
The thirteenth blamed my father.
The sixteenth said he wanted to discuss our child.
The seventeenth said, Please do not keep my baby from me because you’re angry.
I read that one three times.
Then I put the phone down.
Jenna saw my face.
“What?”
I slid it toward her.
She read the message.
Her mouth flattened.
“He found the baby button fast.”
Paul looked up.
“What happened?”
Jenna handed him the phone.
His expression did not change.
“Do not respond emotionally.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“You were staring at the phone like you wanted to throw it through a wall.”
“That can be done unemotionally.”
Robert snorted into his coffee.
Paul ignored him.
“There are going to be separate issues now.”
“I know.”
“No, Claire.”
He placed the phone on the table.
“You know intellectually.”
I looked at him.
“He can be a terrible partner and still have legal rights and responsibilities concerning his child.”
“I know.”
“You may have to communicate with him for years.”
The thought pressed down harder than the wedding had.
I turned toward the window.
Across the alley, somebody was watering balcony plants.
A little boy in red socks pressed both hands against a screen door while a dog barked behind him.
Life had become unbearably ordinary outside Jenna’s kitchen.
“I hate that,” I said.
Paul nodded.
“You are allowed to.”
I looked at him.
“But I don’t get to solve it by pretending he doesn’t exist.”
“No.”
My hand moved over my stomach.
That was the first decision after the altar that felt harder than leaving Grant.
I could humiliate him.
I could cut off access to my company.
I could remove him from my house.
But I could not erase him from the child we had made.
“I won’t use the baby to punish him.”
Jenna sat across from me.
“You don’t have to decide every future custody question today.”
“I know.”
“But that part matters.”
I looked at her.
“He was willing to use the baby against me.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to become him.”
No one answered.
They did not need to.
That evening, Robert arranged for Grant to collect clothes and personal belongings from the house while I stayed at Jenna’s.
A security employee from Whitmore was present only because Grant had previously possessed company files and devices.
Paul made everyone agree in writing that it was not an eviction, a confrontation, or an opportunity to search his property.
Real consequences were less satisfying than movies.
They involved inventories.
Keys.
Passwords.
Copies.
Arguments over a coffee grinder that both people claimed to have purchased.
Grant took the coffee grinder.
I let him.
Two days later, Natalie came to Jenna’s apartment.
Jenna opened the door, saw her, and said, “No.”
I heard Natalie from the kitchen.
“I just need five minutes.”
“You’ve used roughly three years.”
“Jenna.”
“No.”
I stood.
May you like
“Let her in.”
Jenna turned toward me.
