The Day I Divorced Him, I Became His Landlord novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Midnight at the Gate

At midnight the lawyer reads the default notice to Conrad, his mother and the guests, Courtney's key card is dead, and Marisol offers to lease the manor back. The winemaker gives her the cellar keys and warns her that a doctor is coming at eight.

The Ashbury estate has an iron gate with a brass crest, and at midnight I stood in front of it with my brother and a lawyer.

The gate stayed shut.

Behind it, up a long drive lined with old vines, the manor glowed white against the hill.

Joaquin leaned on the hood of his truck with his arms folded and said nothing.

He didn't have to.

Five years of silence had been the loudest thing he ever did.

Headlights swung up the road behind us.

Four cars from the gala had followed Conrad home for the after-party, and guests climbed out in their gowns with glasses still in their hands.

Conrad got out of the first car and found me standing by his gate.

"Marisol." He smiled for the guests. "You're making this harder than it has to be. Come inside."

"It's midnight," the lawyer said.

He lifted a sheet of paper and read it aloud in a voice made for courtrooms.

The note held by Quintero Orchards was in default.

The collateral, the estate at St. Helena with its manor, cellars and land, passed to Marisol Ashbury, the co-holder of the note, as of this minute.

The Ashbury Cellars brand and its wine were not included.

A woman in a silver dress covered her mouth.

Conrad laughed.

"That's absurd. My mother handles that loan. It always gets renewed."

"Renewal needs the signature of the co-holder," the lawyer said. "Marisol Ashbury declined."

Every head turned to me.

I looked at the man I had married.

"I told you it wouldn't be your problem much longer."

The lock on the gate buzzed and swung wide.

The man who opened it from the gatehouse panel wore a canvas jacket and had purple stains up to both wrists.

He had come up from the cellars in the middle of harvest, and he did not look at the guests.

He looked at me.

I knew him by sight.

Wyatt Larkin, the winemaker.

In five years I had never heard him say more than three words to me.

Joaquin drove us up the drive with the guests' cars behind us.

At the manor steps, Courtney reached the front door first.

She waved the key card I had put in her hand at the gala and pressed it to the reader.

The light blinked red.

She tried again, then a third time.

"It isn't working," she said to Conrad, and her voice cracked on the last word.

"The locks were reset at eleven fifty-eight," the lawyer said. "Mrs. Ashbury's card is the only one that opens it."

I took a new card from the folder and held it to the reader.

The light turned green.

The door clicked open on the hall where I had spent five years being corrected.

Conrad's face had drained white.

"You can't throw me out of my own house."

"I'm not throwing you out," I said.

I could hear my own voice, calm and low, and it surprised me.

"Stay. I'll lease you the manor for twelve months at thirty-eight thousand a month, due on the first."

Somebody in the crowd made a sound.

"Ashbury Cellars can pay for the cellars and the vines separately," I said. "Courtney can have the pool house for nine thousand."

"You wouldn't," Courtney whispered.

"Read the lease," I said. "It has your name on it already."

Conrad opened his mouth.

Lillian stepped through the guests and laid a hand on his arm.

She had pressed a handkerchief into my palm only hours earlier, and now she gave me the same soft look.

"Let her have tonight, Conrad," she said. "She has earned one night."

She did not look surprised.

I noticed it and let it go.

Everyone looks calm when they are being gracious.

The guests drifted back toward their cars, whispering, and already I could hear the phones coming out.

By morning half the valley would know.

Joaquin put a hand on my shoulder.

"I'll sleep in the truck," he said. "Go sit down before you fall over."

The gatehouse by the road was a one-room stone cottage that had been empty since before I married.

The lawyer's assistant had left a lamp on and a cot made up.

I sat on the edge of it with the folder in my lap and my beige gown still on, and for the first time in five years nobody was watching me.

I should have felt bigger than I did.

I felt tired, and a little sick, and very awake.

A knock came at the door.

I opened it on the winemaker, with a ring of keys held out in his stained hand.

"Cellars," he said. "Tasting room. The old block gate. The brass one opens the bunkhouse."

"Why are you giving me these?"

"You own them."

He said it plainly, without a smile, and set the keys in my palm.

His fingers were warm and rough, and he took them back at once.

"Mr. Larkin," I said.

"Wyatt." He glanced up the drive toward the lit manor. "Ms. Ashbury, I'm not supposed to tell you this."

"Quintero," I said. "I'm dropping the other one."

His expression shifted at that, so slightly I might have imagined it.

"Ms. Quintero. I was in the cellar at six, and Conrad was on the phone in the next room."

He lowered his voice.

"A doctor will be here at eight with papers. Whatever he tells you, don't get in the car."

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