I Was Counting Down To Leave Him novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Handover

Lydia runs the rehearsal, Judith warns Flora, Flora ends Langston's access to the files, and an old tablet shows what he needs her for.

The next morning, Lydia stood at the center of my rehearsal with my clipboard.

The lighting crew was raising the chandeliers in the ballroom. Langston watched from the aisle.

Lydia knew he liked jazz better than strings.

She knew he hated lilies and wanted the lights dimmed after dinner.

She even knew which bourbon he had ordered for the groom's suite.

I let her make every decision.

At first, Langston looked pleased.

He smiled when Lydia suggested changing the entrance music to a song they had loved in college.

Then he looked at me.

I wrote the change in my notes.

His smile faded. "Flora, you spent weeks choosing that song."

"Do you want to hear the new one first?"

"If you both like it, that's enough."

Lydia took his arm, and Langston barely seemed to notice.

He kept watching me.

I went on checking boxes.

Judith Ellery arrived before lunch.

She was Langston's mother, one of the first investors in Ellery Hospitality, and still on its board.

She kissed her son and then studied my face.

"Lydia told me about yesterday's misunderstanding," she said. "I'm glad you were professional."

"The schedule matters to my team."

Judith turned her cuff straight. "It matters to the investors too. Try to remember that."

I agreed with her, and that made her pause.

The lobby had changed overnight.

A twenty-foot photograph now hung above the fireplace.

Langston and Lydia stood together on the front steps of Saltmarsh House, and her hand rested on his arm.

My name was in small print under the sponsor list.

For six months I had picked every chair, every florist and every place setting in that building.

Now the finished hotel looked back at me without my face in it.

Langston joined me under the photograph.

"The magazine chose it," he said quickly. "I never approved the layout."

"It's a good picture."

He turned to face me.

I checked that the frame was level.

He lowered his voice. "You used to care about things like this."

I looked at him.

Last month I had asked him not to bring Lydia to a private dinner with the investors.

He had told me I was embarrassing him.

Now he stood there waiting for the objection he had refused to hear.

"The picture works for the opening," I said.

He caught up with me at the ballroom doors.

"If you want Lydia gone, just say it."

I stopped beside a table of empty champagne glasses.

"Would you send her away?"

His answer came a beat too late. "Flora, you know it isn't that simple."

I straightened a glass. "The interview notes are in your suite."

Before he could answer, Lydia called him from the stage.

He stayed beside me another moment.

Then he went to her.

That afternoon, I backed up every contract connected to Saltmarsh House.

I changed the password on our design archive and removed Ellery Hospitality from the shared vendor drive.

The progress bar crawled across my screen.

I downloaded approval emails, invoices and original drafts.

When the system asked whether I wanted to end Langston's access, I clicked yes.

He appeared in my office doorway a few minutes later.

"Why can't I open the vendor files?"

"Lydia has the copies she needs. I'm preparing the final handover."

His fingers tightened around his phone. "What handover?"

I let the question sit between us.

He stepped farther into the office and blocked the doorway.

Then a caterer called my name from the hall.

When I came back, Langston was gone.

I closed my laptop and went to the bridal suite to check the replacement place cards.

Langston's old tablet lay under a stack of menus.

He had told me months ago that it stopped working.

The screen lit up under my hand.

A message sat on it.

[Lydia: After the wedding, are you really going to tell her?]

The passcode was still the date of our courthouse wedding.

I opened the thread.

It was full of hotel rooms, late dinners and jokes about the questions I asked when he came home after midnight.

I laid the tablet flat on the bed so I wouldn't drop it.

Above Lydia's message was a question from the night before.

She had asked why Langston kept pretending the wedding mattered.

His answer waited beneath it.

[Langston: After the launch. I only need Flora to hold everything together for seven more days.]

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