The Man Who Can't Let Go novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Thirty Days

His mother offers a smooth welcome, Virginia's hotel booking turns out to be cancelled by the VanAlstyne family office, and her lawyer says a contested divorce is fourteen months away. Tobias offers to sign on day thirty-one if she lives as his wife until then.

"Virginia, dear. There you are."

Greta VanAlstyne came through the crowd with both hands out and her pearls swinging.

She was fifty-eight, silver-haired and perfectly dressed, and she kissed the air beside Virginia's cheek.

"You look wonderful," she said. "Thin, but wonderful. Tobias, why is everyone standing around? Somebody light the cake."

Nobody moved.

"Mother," Tobias said, "stay out of this."

"Of course," Greta said warmly. "I only want to help. Virginia, you must be exhausted from the flight."

"I'm fine."

"Then let's not do this in front of the staff," Greta said, and she lowered her voice to a kind murmur. "My car is downstairs. Dinner at the townhouse, your old room made up, and tomorrow the two of you can talk like adults."

It was a lovely offer, and it was the first time Greta had ever made one.

Virginia looked at her bare ring finger, then at the paper still lying on the cake table.

"No, thank you," she said. "I booked a hotel."

She picked up the last page, folded it into the envelope and walked out through the silent room.

The girl with the phone stepped aside to let her pass, still filming.

In the corridor, a tall man in a camel coat pushed off the wall where he had been waiting.

He had scrubs on under the coat and a hospital badge clipped to the lapel.

"Abel," Virginia said.

Abel Crane had been Tobias's best friend since they were twelve, and he had danced with her at her wedding.

He hugged her without asking, and she let him.

"I texted you six times when I heard," he said. "I didn't know you'd already landed."

"I didn't tell anyone I was coming."

"I noticed." He let her go and looked down at her. "Ginny, that ring on his hand."

"I saw it."

"He hasn't taken it off in three years. Not once. Not in surgery scrubs I've watched him wear it under two gloves."

"Then he's a slow reader," Virginia said. "I sent papers."

Abel opened his mouth and shut it again.

"What?" she said.

"Nothing. Walk with me to the elevator."

In the elevator her phone rang with her lawyer's name.

Virginia had left a message from the airport, and she answered it before the doors closed.

"I'm sorry to call this late," the lawyer said. "I got your voicemail. Did you see him?"

"I saw him. He says he never got the papers."

There was a pause, and a rustle of paper on the other end.

"I have no signature returned, and no response in three years," the lawyer said. "I assumed he was stalling, which is common. But if he contests it now, you're looking at a trial date, and the calendar in Empire City is fourteen months out."

"Fourteen months."

"If he refuses to sign, yes. I'm sorry, Virginia."

She hung up and stared at the elevator's brass numbers.

"Bad?" Abel asked.

"It's a year of my life," she said.

Abel said nothing, which was what he did when he was sorry.

The cab took her to the hotel on Fifth, a tall glass building with her name on a confirmation she had printed on the plane.

The woman at the front desk smiled at her and then stopped smiling.

"I'm so sorry, Ms. Madden. That reservation was cancelled this evening."

"By who? I didn't cancel it."

"By the owner's office." The woman looked at her screen and then, carefully, away from it. "This is a VanAlstyne property."

Virginia turned her head very slowly and looked at the brass letters over the door.

VANALSTYNE MERIDIAN.

She had read the name on the booking page and never once thought of it.

"We can call you another hotel, if you'd like," the desk clerk offered. "Though I think the family has an arrangement with all of them."

Virginia laughed once.

It was not a good sound.

"Of course they do," she said.

She turned around with her suitcase, and Tobias was standing in the middle of the marble lobby.

He had come alone, without his coat, and he was out of breath from the stairs.

"Virginia," he said. "I didn't do that."

"I believe you," she said. "It doesn't help."

"Then let me help." He took one careful step closer, and he didn't touch her. "I'll make you an offer, and you can hate it."

"I already hate it."

"Thirty days," Tobias said. "You live in my house as my wife. Separate rooms, if you want. In public, you're Mrs. VanAlstyne."

The lobby was very quiet.

"And on the thirty-first day," he said, "I sign whatever you put in front of me."

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