Chapter 5: Served

On Thursday night a family lawyer from Marit's church sat at Marit's kitchen table in her coat.

She ate three pieces of rhubarb pie.

She was sixty, short and unhurried, and she read the police report with a pen in her teeth.

"File first," she said. "Divorce, and a motion for temporary custody. Whoever files first tells the story first."

"He's had a lawyer since January," I said.

"Then he's two months ahead and you are going to catch up by Monday." She set the pen down.

"Do you have any papers from the company?" she asked. "Anything with your name on it?"

"I did his books on my days off for a year," I said. "Before we married. That's all."

"Nina." Marit was standing at the stove with her back to us. She turned around. "Your mother's box."

I stared at her.

She went into the hall closet and came out with a flat gray file box tied shut with kitchen string.

"Your mother gave this to me the month before she died," she said.

"She said you'd need it someday, and that you'd say you didn't."

I untied the string.

Inside were my mother's tax returns, her life insurance letter, and a stapled set of papers with a bank stamp.

Haldorsen Freight, LLC. Founding capital agreement.

I turned to the signature page. My name was there, beside Wyatt's, in blue ink.

I had been twenty-four.

I had put my mother's insurance money into his first truck loan, forty thousand dollars, because he said we were a team.

"Section four," the lawyer said, reading over my shoulder. "Nina Brandt. Thirty percent."

"I forgot," I said.

"You forgot you own thirty percent of a trucking company."

"He told me it was a formality." My mouth was dry. "He said my name was on it so the bank would feel good."

The lawyer closed the folder very gently.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Keep It, We Don't Need It Anymore from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.