Chapter 11: Kendra

Kendra's apartment was on the nineteenth floor of a Gold Coast tower.

The doorman let me up because I said I was delivering a document.

It was true.

I had the Explanation of Benefits in my bag, folded in thirds.

She opened the door in sweatpants and a Pinnacle hoodie, her hair in a clip and her eyes swollen.

The board had suspended her that morning, pending the forensic review.

Behind her, the living room was full of half-packed boxes.

"Come to gloat?" she said.

"I came to talk."

"I have nothing to say to you."

"Then you can listen." I held out the paper. "It will take one minute."

She wanted to slam the door.

I saw it in her shoulders.

But she was twenty-seven and alone and she looked as though no one had spoken to her kindly in days, and she took the page.

She read it standing in the doorway.

Her lips moved over the date.

"This is fake," she said.

"It came from my own tax files. The insurance company will confirm it in one phone call."

"He had it reversed."

"Did he tell you that?"

She did not answer.

I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.

"Sit down, Kendra. Please."

She sat on a box marked KITCHEN and held the paper in her lap.

Out the window, Lake Michigan lay flat and pale.

"A year ago,"

she said at last, in a small voice.

"He told me you couldn't have children. He said you'd tried three times and the doctors gave up. He said it ruined something between you."

"He told you that?"

"He cried when he said it." She wiped her nose. "I thought he was the saddest man I'd ever met."

"And when you said you wanted a family?"

"He said he'd had a procedure once, a long time ago, and that his doctor reversed it. He even showed me a letter."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Divorce and Rise to My Pinnacle from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.