I Chose a New Life novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Stenberg House

Rhoda takes her in, the clip passes two million, and Bennett's father fires her by email.

Stenberg House stood on a corner two blocks up from the harbor, with a porch light on and a sign that said VACANCY.

Cliff walked me up the steps in my cake-stained dress and his flannel jacket.

He knocked twice.

The door opened and my aunt Rhoda stood there in a flour-dusted apron, holding a wooden spoon.

She looked at the dress.

She looked at the tape on my face.

"Clifford Halvorson," she said. "What did you do to my niece?"

"He didn't do anything," I said. "He gave me a ride."

Rhoda's face changed.

She dropped the spoon on the porch and pulled me in so hard the jacket slid off my shoulders.

She was warm and solid and she smelled like cinnamon.

I had not been held by anyone in a long time who didn't want something from me.

That was when I finally cried.

Cliff picked up the spoon, wiped it on his sleeve and set it on the railing.

"I'll be at the dock if she needs anything," he said.

"Come for breakfast," Rhoda said into my hair.

"I always do," he said, and he was gone down the steps.

Inside, Rhoda sat me at the kitchen table and put a bowl of soup in front of me.

I told her everything between spoonfuls.

When I got to the part where Bennett said I was overreacting, she put down the ladle and said a word I had never heard her say.

"I told your mother's ghost I wouldn't say that word again," she said. "I'm saying it for you."

"It was a joke, Aunt Rhoda."

"It was not a joke. A joke is when everyone laughs."

"Everyone did."

"Everyone but you, so it wasn't a joke."

She went upstairs and came back with sweatpants, a Packers shirt and a pair of wool socks.

I changed in the bathroom with the door open a crack, so she could hear that I was all right.

The cut on my cheek looked worse in the light.

Rhoda cleaned it again and pressed the strips down.

"You were engaged for ten months," she said. "I saw the pictures. I thought you looked happy."

"I was."

"Were you?"

I opened my mouth to say yes.

I thought of Roxana in the kitchen of Bennett's house in June, reaching past me to take a mug and saying, softly, "He likes it when you don't argue."

I had thought she was giving me advice.

"I thought I was," I said.

Rhoda didn't say anything.

She handed me her laptop.

"I have no phone," I said.

"Do you have your password?"

"I know my email."

I opened the browser and signed in to my work account at Ellery Marine.

I told myself I only wanted to find my own paystub.

The inbox had forty-one new messages.

Most were from people at the dealership: Are you okay? That's so awful. Did you see the video?

Two were from the cousin who had filmed me.

The third was from Bennett's father.

It had been sent at 7:12 that evening, with the subject line EMPLOYMENT.

Dear Ms. Harker,

Given your conduct today, which has embarrassed this family and this company in front of the public, your employment with Ellery Marine ends immediately.

Your final pay will be held against the costs of the wedding venue, the cake and the damages caused by your departure.

Return all company property by Monday.

Regards, Ellery Marine, Office of the Owner

I read it twice.

"What?" Rhoda said.

I turned the screen around.

She read it standing behind me with her hand on my shoulder.

"They can't hold your pay," she said.

"They can say they will."

"Della."

"I did their books for six years," I said. "I know exactly how much I'm owed. It's four thousand two hundred and eleven dollars."

"You remember that?"

"I remember every number I've ever touched."

She laughed once, short and astonished.

"Then you're going to need that memory."

I closed the laptop.

I did not sleep that night.

I lay in my mother's old room under a quilt Rhoda had put there for me years ago and listened to the foghorn.

Sometime after three I opened the laptop again.

The clip had passed two million views.

People I didn't know had written about my hair, my dress, my scream.

Someone had made a version with a song.

The top comment, with eleven thousand likes, said: lol she deserves it, who gets that mad over a cake.

At 6:40 in the morning Rhoda knocked and came in with a mug of coffee.

She had her phone in her hand.

"Cliff just called," she said. "He's bringing the early boat in from the island."

"Okay."

"He has two passengers." She took a breath. "A man in a gray suit and a thin blond woman. They paid him extra to go before anyone else."

I sat up.

"They asked him the way to Stenberg House," Rhoda said.

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