Chapter 20: What Holden Signed

We came home from the hospital on Monday morning with a baby in a borrowed car seat.

Otis drove the van at fifteen miles an hour.

Libby sat in the back with her hand an inch from the baby's foot the whole way.

Holden was standing outside the shop.

He stood on the sidewalk in the thin March sun, without his driver or his security.

A lawyer in a gray coat stood on one side of him and a notary on the other.

The line for the morning's croissants was out the door and around the corner.

They had come for the story, and they got it.

Otis stopped the van at the curb.

"Stay in the car," he said.

"I'm not afraid of him."

"I know. Stay in the car anyway, and let me see what he wants."

"He wants nothing," I said. "He said so on the card."

I opened my door.

The baby was asleep.

I took the car seat in both hands and stepped down onto the sidewalk, and a hundred people got quiet.

Holden looked at the baby.

I watched him look.

His eyes went to her face and stayed there.

"Greta," he said. "I'm not here to take anything."

"So I read."

"May I put some papers on the table?"

I looked at the window of the shop, at table nine in the sun.

"Outside," I said. "On the hood of the van. Everyone can watch you sign them."

He did.

The notary spread four documents across the hood, and Holden uncapped a pen.

"The first is my resignation from Stroud Capital, and my release of every claim to my severance," he said, loud enough for the line.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Divorce While I'm Pregnant? Fine, Let's Sign It! from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.