Swept Away by My Janitor Husband novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Garbage Bags

Her things are on the curb and the locks are changed; Jean takes her mother's lamp back in front of the neighbors, and Colin texts her an ultimatum for the party.

The guards walked me to the lobby and out the revolving door.

One of them said, "Sorry, ma'am," and I believe he meant it.

My car was in the employee garage, and the garage card had been on the same lanyard as my badge.

I took the bus home.

It was a quarter to eleven when I turned onto Hadley Street.

I live on the second floor of a brick walk-up with Colin.

I lived there with Colin.

My key did not fit.

I tried it twice, and then I looked down.

Black garbage bags lined the front steps.

There were nine of them, knotted at the top.

My yellow rain boots stuck out of one.

My mother's old standing lamp lay on its side across the walk, with the shade crushed flat.

A light was on in our front window.

Brooke stood in it, wearing my bathrobe.

She saw me looking up and closed the curtain.

I stood on the sidewalk and counted slowly to ten.

At the top of the count, the porch light across the street came on.

Then another one came on beside it.

Our neighbors are nosy people, and tonight I was grateful for it.

I bent down and picked up the lamp.

The shade was ruined, but the base was fine.

My mother had bought it at a church sale in 1998.

I tucked it under my arm.

"Colin," I said to the closed curtain, loudly, "I know you can hear me."

Nobody answered.

"You have twenty minutes to open this door and give me back my deposit," I said.

"Or I will tell every person on this street what you did in the break room."

The curtain twitched.

Colin's car pulled up to the curb behind me.

He climbed out with his jacket over his arm.

"Jean," he said, in his reasonable voice. "Come on. It's late."

"The locks are changed," I said.

"You were fired," he said. "I've been told you're a security risk. I'm protecting my home."

"My name is on that lease," I said.

"And my name is on the deposit," he said, "which is gone, along with your share of the rent for the rest of the year."

An old man across the street was standing on his porch in a robe.

A woman two doors down had her phone out.

I turned to face the street.

"My fiance cheated on me with my best friend," I said, in the voice I use for conference calls.

"Then he had me thrown out of my job for something I didn't do."

"And now my clothes are on the sidewalk."

"Jean," Colin hissed.

"If any of you need a vice president of sales who frames his girlfriends," I said, "this is him."

The woman with the phone laughed.

Colin's face turned a dark, ugly red.

"You're embarrassing yourself," he said.

"I'm embarrassing you," I said. "I'm just not hiding it."

He stepped toward me, close enough that I smelled the cologne.

"Pick up your trash and go," he said quietly. "Or I'll tell the police where to find you."

A hand closed around the neck of the nearest garbage bag.

"I've got these," said a man's voice behind me.

I did not turn around at first.

I knew the voice from the break room, and I had no idea how he had gotten here.

Sam stood at the foot of the steps in his gray coveralls and a canvas jacket.

He had a duffel bag on one shoulder and a patient look on his face.

He lifted four bags in each hand.

"You followed me," I said.

"Same bus," he said.

"The 14. I clocked out early. Nobody checks on the janitor."

He nodded at Colin.

"Is this the guy?"

"That's the guy," I said.

Colin looked him up and down, from the cap to the boots.

"Who's this," he said. "Your new boyfriend? The mop guy?"

"I'm the guy carrying her things," Sam said calmly. "You might want to step out of the way."

Colin did not step out of the way.

Sam walked into him, shoulder first, only a little.

Colin stumbled back a pace and caught himself on his car.

"Sorry," Sam said. "Heavy bags."

The old man across the street whistled.

I picked up the last bag myself and lifted the lamp under my arm.

We walked to the corner together.

I could hear Brooke on the porch, saying Colin's name over and over, and then the front door slamming.

At the bus stop, we set the bags down and my hands began to shake.

I let them.

"Thank you," I said.

"It's nothing," said Sam.

A man who owned a nine-story tower was standing on a sidewalk in a canvas jacket, holding my rain boots.

I knew exactly who he was.

He did not know I knew.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

It was a text from Colin.

"Saturday, 7 p.m., the club. Come and apologize to my parents and every guest, and I might let this go."

"Don't, and your parents' eighteen thousand is mine to keep, and the police report stays filed."

Under it came a second text, a single line.

"Nobody wants you, Jean."

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