He Massaged My Legs While Marrying Another Woman novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The House

Lydia goes home with Knox as her escort, takes her father's papers in front of Preston's mother and Skylar, and finds the divorce decree with her own signature.

I did not call Preston that night.

I sat on the edge of a hotel bed with the police report open beside me and read his statement until the words stopped holding still.

In the morning I knocked on Knox's office door.

"I need my father's papers," I said. "They're in my house."

"Your husband's house," Knox said.

"My father built it."

He picked up his keys.

"I'll drive you," he said. "I want to see his face when he sees you."

It was not kindness, and I did not need it to be.

The house sat at the end of a long drive, with white pillars and my father's maple tree on the lawn.

Knox lifted my chair out of his trunk and set it down without a word.

I rolled up the ramp Preston had built for me, and rang the bell on a house I had lived in for six years.

Skylar opened the door.

She wore an apron over her cream dress and held a dish towel in her hand.

"Lydia," she said, and her whole face softened. "Oh, thank goodness. Come in. I just put the kettle on."

She stepped aside as if this were her kitchen.

I rolled past her, and Knox followed.

His mother sat in the living room, in my father's armchair, with a teacup on a saucer.

"Well," Judith said. "You've brought a guest."

"I brought a witness," I said. "I'm taking my father's papers."

"Don't be dramatic."

"Where's the study key?"

"It's locked for a reason, dear," Judith said. "Preston doesn't want you upset."

Knox took one step into the room.

"Mrs. Aldous," he said, "you can hand over the key, or I can call a locksmith and a police officer and let the neighbors watch both."

Judith's cup stopped halfway to her mouth.

"Who is this man?"

"The man who paid for the room your daughter-in-law slept in last night," Knox said.

Skylar touched my shoulder.

"I'll get it," she said gently. "It's Lydia's house, Judith. She has every right."

She went down the hall and came back with a small brass key.

She had known exactly which drawer it was in.

I took it from her palm.

"Thank you," I said.

"Of course." Skylar smiled. "I've been taking care of everything while you were away from home."

I turned my chair toward the hall so she wouldn't see my face.

The first door on the left was my bedroom.

It stood open.

My closet had been emptied into cardboard boxes stacked against the wall.

Skylar's blouses hung in the space where my dresses used to be.

"Are those mine?" I asked, because I needed to hear it said.

"The room was so far from his office," Skylar said behind me. "We thought you'd be more comfortable downstairs."

"We."

"Preston and I."

I rolled to the study and unlocked it.

My father's desk sat in the middle with a leather blotter and a green lamp.

Everything on it had been moved.

Preston's laptop sat where my father's pen tray had been.

I opened the second drawer and found the will box exactly where I remembered, beneath a stack of company ledgers.

It was heavy, and I held it on my lap with both arms.

"That belongs to this family," Judith said from the doorway.

"It belongs to my father," I said. "I'm the family."

She opened her mouth.

Knox came up behind her and said, "Move."

She moved.

I wheeled around the desk to leave.

Then I saw the folder on the corner of the blotter, with yellow sticky flags fanned along its edge.

I picked it up and opened it.

The first page read In the Matter of Conwell Aldous, Dissolution of Marriage.

Every page had a yellow flag in Preston's handwriting.

Sign here, Lyd.

Sign here.

Last line.

Page after page, my signature sat on the line beside his flag, in the blue ink of the pen he had pressed into my hand.

I turned to the first page and read the date it was filed.

April third.

I looked up at Skylar in the doorway.

"The crash was in March," I said.

"Yes."

"He filed it the week I was learning to hold a cup, and he had me sign it in August."

Skylar's eyes went to the floor, only for a moment.

"He waited as long as he could," she said softly. "He did everything he could for you, Lydia. He really did."

Knox took the folder out of my hand and turned it so he could read the flags himself.

"Sign here," he read aloud. "Last line."

Then he looked at Judith.

"You let her sign these without reading a page."

"She was lucky to have a husband who stayed," Judith said.

"He filed for divorce while she was learning to hold a cup," Knox said, "and he's marrying his assistant on Friday."

Nobody answered him.

I closed the folder and set it on top of the will box.

Behind us, the front door opened, and a man's footsteps came down the hall.

"Lyd," Preston said from the doorway. "I told you you'd come home."

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