I Married a Stranger to Ruin Them novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Friday the Thirteenth

Matt says yes to a one-year deal after she tells him about the baby, and Ian is waiting in the parking lot.

"No," Matt said.

He said it kindly.

Carrie picked her pen up off the floor.

"Can we at least talk about the no?" she said.

"We just did."

He went back to the furnace.

I stood in the office doorway in my party dress and watched him gather another ball of glass like I'd never spoken.

"I'm not crazy," I said.

"Didn't say you were."

He turned the pipe. "You got fired four hours ago, lady. Go sleep. People don't marry strangers because they had a bad Tuesday."

I drove back to Pittsburgh at two in the morning and checked into a hotel by the airport.

I didn't go home.

Home had Ian in it.

On Wednesday I sat in a lawyer's office downtown in yesterday's dress and asked her to file for divorce.

She said Ian would be served on Thursday.

Then I bought jeans and a sweater at a drugstore, threw up in its bathroom, and drove north again.

It was dark when I got there.

Matt was at the furnace.

Of course he was.

I sat down on an overturned bucket by the annealing oven and waited until he set the piece down.

"You're back," he said.

"I didn't tell you everything last night."

"There's more?"

"I'm eight weeks pregnant."

He took his gloves off very slowly.

"It's my husband's," I said. "Ian's. Nobody knows. Not him, not anyone. You're the first person I've said it to out loud."

He looked at me for a long time.

"Why are you telling me?"

"Because I'm asking you to marry me, and you should know what you're marrying."

He sat down on the bench across from me, elbows on his knees.

"Okay," he said. "Tell me the rest. Slow."

So I did.

"One year. I become an Ashbaugh, and a partner, and I can sign for the works. I bring my formulas, my chemistry and every buyer I know. I build a new line in your back room, and it goes out in your bottles."

"And I do what?"

"You keep the furnace lit."

"That's it?"

"That's a lot. I've seen you do it."

He rubbed his beard.

"There's a catch," I said. "I'm still married. A divorce here takes ninety days if he agrees, and longer if he doesn't."

"So you can't actually marry me."

"Not legally. Not yet. Friday we'd stand in front of a judge and sign a partnership agreement under your charter. The bank only needs a family member's signature. Then, the day the divorce is final, we do it for real."

"You checked all this today."

"Between throwing up."

That got half a smile out of him.

"And the..." He waved a hand at the space between us.

"No sex," I said. "It's a business deal."

"I wasn't going to bring it up on a first date."

"This isn't a date."

"Lady, you're proposing on a bucket. It's the best date I've had in two years."

I laughed before I could stop it.

He looked at the furnace.

Then at the framed letter through the office door.

Then at me.

"A year," he said.

"A year."

"And you're not going to run back to him when he says sorry."

"He's never once said sorry."

"Then yeah," Matt said. "Okay. Yes."

I held out my hand.

He looked at it and shook it, hard and warm, with a burn scar across the back of his knuckles.

"You need this more than I do," he said. "That's the only reason."

"That's a lie."

"Half," he said. "It's half a lie."

Friday the thirteenth was cold and gray and smelled like the river.

The county courthouse was four blocks from the works.

Matt wore a black suit jacket that had been his father's, and it pulled tight across his shoulders.

Carrie came straight from the shop in her work boots and a dress she'd clearly lost a fight with.

"Don't look at my feet," she said. "My feet are a witness."

The judge read the partnership agreement twice.

Then she looked over her glasses at the three of us.

"This is unusual," she said.

"It's an unusual building," Matt said.

She smiled a little, and blessed it, and we both signed.

I used my silver pen.

"You can kiss... well," the judge said. "You can shake hands."

We shook hands.

Carrie took a picture on her phone and cried, and said it was the cold.

His mother was waiting in the kitchen of the house beside the works.

She was a small woman in a cardigan with flour up both arms, and she didn't say a word when Matt told her.

She looked at me for a long time.

Then she put a plate in front of me, piled with pierogies and fried onions and a spoonful of sour cream.

"My husband asked me after two dates," she said. "Everybody said I was crazy."

"Were you?"

"Completely. Eat."

The crew came in from the shop one by one and ate standing up.

The oldest of them, a stooped man of seventy-two, shook my hand and said my bottle had been a nice bottle.

I was on my second plate when Carrie came in from the yard.

She wasn't smiling anymore.

"Alice," she said. "There's a guy in the parking lot."

"What guy?"

"Navy suit. White sneakers. He's holding a pile of papers and asking for his wife."

Matt set down his fork.

I looked out the kitchen window.

Ian was standing next to his car in the gravel, with the divorce papers in one hand, and he was smiling.

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