He Cheated With My Friend, My Parents Helped novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Held Until Christmas Eve

Jean has the lawyer execute the agreement but holds the divorce filing for Christmas Eve, and meets Colin's brother Nathan in the elevator. He tells her Colin is closing on a house in Simone's name.

On Monday morning I took the signed agreement out of the house inside a library book.

The lawyer's office was on the fourteenth floor of a building on Second Avenue, and the lawyer who had drafted the agreement eight years ago was waiting for me with the file already open.

She read my signature, checked it against the date, and nodded.

"It's valid as of today," she said. "All marital assets split down the middle. The house, the company shares, the accounts. He signed it himself, with counsel, and it's been sitting in a drawer for eight years."

"Does he know it's here?"

"Nobody has told him anything."

She slid a form across the desk.

"This is the filing. When you sign it, I send it to the court and he's served within the week."

I looked at the form.

I knew my own handwriting well enough to know it would shake.

"Not yet," I said.

She waited.

"I'm going to a family dinner on Christmas Eve," I said. "I want to sign it in front of everyone who helped him."

The lawyer folded her hands.

"Mrs. Brenner, you understand that waiting a month gives him a month."

"He thinks I'm still afraid of him."

"Are you?"

"I'm afraid of my father, a little," I said. "I'm not afraid of Colin anymore."

She wrote something down, then looked up.

"One more thing. His brother was the witness on Colin's signature. The firm rang him this morning to confirm. He asked for your appointment time."

"Nathan?"

"He said he'd be in the lobby."

I stood up too quickly and the chair legs scraped.

I had not seen Nathan Brenner in three years.

The elevator was empty until the sixth floor, where it stopped and opened on him.

He was taller than I remembered, in green scrubs under a dark coat, with his hospital badge still clipped to the pocket.

He had Colin's jaw and none of his smile.

"Jean," he said.

"Nathan."

He stepped in.

The doors closed, and neither of us pressed a button.

"I came from a shift," he said. "I had four hours of sleep and a phone call from a law firm asking me to remember a wedding I would give a lot to forget."

"You were his best man."

"I was. I'm not sure what that makes me now." He looked at the folder under my arm. "You signed it."

"On Thursday."

"Thursday was Thanksgiving."

"I know."

He waited.

I hadn't meant to tell him anything, but I was so tired of being the only one who knew.

"Colin never ended it," I said. "Simone is seven months pregnant, and my parents are feeding her at their table."

His face did not move, but his hand tightened on the strap of his bag.

"You were in the ER that night," I said. "You saw what my father did."

"I saw his eye."

"I've kept his two rules for three years, Nathan."

"Three years," he said.

The elevator hummed.

"I told you that night to call me if he ever touched you," Nathan said. His voice was very even. "I said it twice. My number hasn't changed."

"He never touched me."

"That wasn't the only way he could hurt you."

I looked down at the floor numbers.

He was right, and I couldn't say so.

"My mother called me last week," he said. "We hardly talk. She said Colin is about to be a father and that he's been very quiet about it."

"It's Simone's baby."

"I figured."

The doors opened on the lobby, and neither of us moved.

"Colin's mother told me something else," Nathan said. "He's been buying a house in Medina. Four bedrooms, a nursery already designed. It closes on December twentieth."

"In whose name?"

"Hers."

I felt the folder bend under my fingers.

"That's four days before the dinner you want to sign in front of everyone," Nathan said. "I think he plans to have two homes by Christmas."

He held the door with his arm.

"Jean," he said. "What do you need?"

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