Fifteen Days to Divorce novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Not the Other Woman

Portia showed him the photo over breakfast.

Malachi looked at it for a long time.

"That was taken from across the street," he said. "From the hedge."

"Somebody was standing in your hedge at one in the morning."

"Our hedge."

"Our hedge," she said. "I'm still going to Ellie today."

He put down his fork.

"You said you'd show me."

"I did." He picked the fork up again and put it down again. "Eat first."

Ellie Gershwin's office was above a dry cleaner in Studio City, up a flight of stairs that smelled of starch.

The door was open.

A woman sat inside in a cardigan with elbow patches and a long silver braid, holding a mug of tea in both hands.

She was about sixty, and she did not get up.

"So you're the wife," Ellie said.

"I'm Portia."

"I know. He talks about you in the third act of every session. Sit down, you're blocking my light."

Portia sat.

Malachi stood by the window with his hands in his pockets.

"Malachi thinks you think I'm his mistress," Ellie said.

"I did," Portia said, and her face went hot.

"I'm sixty-two," said Ellie. "I have a bad hip, a cat with diabetes, and a husband who is a retired plumber. If I were a mistress I'd demand a better coffee machine."

Portia started to laugh, and it came out cracked.

"The terrace calls," she said.

"He does his exercises with me at night. Breathing, pacing, short phrases. He's been doing it for fourteen years."

"Exercises for what?"

Ellie looked at Malachi.

He had gone very still.

"I stammer," he said.

It came out slowly, and he did not stop on it.

"I've stammered since I was six. When it's a script, it's gone. It's somebody else's mouth." He looked at the floor. "In my own words, it comes back."

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