I Signed Away Eight Million to Leave Him novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Three Years

"Come home, dear," the owner said on the phone. "Right now. Wear trousers."

I wore trousers.

Corbin drove me in the bartender's truck, because his own face was now on every phone in America.

The gate at the Sea Cliff had thirty cameras instead of twelve.

The housekeeper met us at the kitchen door and pulled us in by our sleeves.

The lobby was a mess.

Six wedding guests had cancelled before lunch. A travel magazine had pulled its June feature. The phone at the desk rang and rang, and nobody answered it.

A heavy man in a golf shirt stood by the fireplace with his arms crossed.

The owner's nephew. Her only family, the housekeeper whispered. He came up from Boston twice a year, to count things.

"Aunt," he said loudly, "she has to go. Today. You're eighty-two. You can't have your name next to this."

The owner sat in her wicker chair by the window, with her cane across her knees.

She didn't look at him. She looked at me.

"Well?" she said. "I'd like to hear it from you. Not from my nephew and not from a website."

The whole staff had drifted in. The bartender. The cook. The housekeeper's girls with their arms full of linens.

They were all waiting.

I could have asked to talk in her office.

I didn't.

I stood in the middle of the lobby I was restoring and told them all of it.

All of it, in order, from the terrace to the stage.

"Last night was the first night," I said. "I'm not sorry about it. I'd do it again. But the photos are a lie, and I didn't do what they say I did."

My voice shook once, on "first night." I let it.

"I'd like to finish this hotel," I said. "If you'll have me. If you won't, I understand, and I'll leave you every drawing I've made."

It was very quiet.

The cook cleared his throat.

"She found the seashells," he said, to nobody in particular.

"She rehung the moth chandelier," said one of the girls. "By herself. On a Sunday."

"She eats my chowder," said the bartender, as if that settled everything.

The owner tapped her cane on the floor once.

"I don't fire people for standing in the snow," she said. "Nephew, go back to Boston. Neve, the ballroom floor is still sagging."

Her nephew went red and stomped out through the front door, straight into the cameras.

The housekeeper's girls cheered.

I went and stood in the back hall, by the ice machine, and shook for five minutes where nobody could see me.

Corbin found me there.

He leaned on the wall beside me.

"I'm going to resign," he said. "I'll call the board this afternoon. If I'm gone, the story's over. They'll leave you alone."

I turned and stared at him.

"Don't you dare."

"Neve..."

"She sent you away for three years with a lie. She took your chair. She took my ring and my name and my ceiling." I poked him hard in the chest. "Don't you dare hand her the last thing she wants. Don't you dare give her that."

He caught my finger and held it against his chest.

"All right," he said. "Then what do we do?"

"We work. And we find out who stood at that window."

I already knew who. Knowing wasn't enough.

At three that afternoon, Margaux arrived for her wedding walkthrough.

She'd booked it weeks ago. She came anyway, through the cameras, smiling.

White suit. Sunglasses. A wedding planner and a florist trailing behind her.

I met her in the ballroom.

She saw me and her smile got wider.

"Oh, it's the homewrecker," she said, loud enough for the florist. "Shouldn't you be in hiding?"

"Can we talk alone?"

She waved the planner and the florist away. They went, looking back.

We stood in the middle of the sagging floor under the moth chandelier.

"The Blue Room," I said. "Christmas Eve, three years ago. Somebody stood at that window with a camera."

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