Divorced, Broke, and Back as His Perfect Wife novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Coat

Lena politely hands Bree her coat and takes back the key in front of the staff, and Brennan takes Bree's side on the porch and walks out of the house.

I did not scream, and I did not throw the coffee.

I had decided on the stairs that if I found her down here, I would be the best-mannered wife in Ohio.

"Good morning, Bree," I said. "How do you take it?"

She blinked.

"Oh. Cream. Thank you."

"Of course."

I took down a travel mug from the cabinet where it had always been, filled it, and snapped on the lid.

Bree watched me do it without moving.

"Brennan said you wouldn't mind," she said. "Just until the weekend. My landlord is fixing a pipe."

"That sounds hard. Where's your coat?"

"My coat?"

"I'll get it."

I walked down the hall to the closet and found it on the second hook, a camel wool coat with a pearl pin on the lapel.

She had hung it next to Brennan's overcoat. Mine had been in that spot for seven years.

I carried it back and held it open for her.

That was the moment she understood.

"Lena, I really think we should talk to Brennan."

"We will. In the driveway."

The housekeeper came in through the back door at that moment with her bag over her shoulder.

She stopped, looked at Bree in the shirt, looked at me holding the coat, and put her bag down very slowly on a chair.

The gardener, who had come to move the leaf bags, appeared at the window behind her.

"Everyone's early," I said cheerfully. "Bree is just leaving."

"I'm not dressed."

"Your dress is in the dryer. It's still warm."

Bree went to the laundry room and came back in the pink dress from the party, with her shoes in her hand.

Nobody said a word.

I put the coat over her shoulders. I put the mug in her hand.

"Keys," I said.

"Brennan gave me that key."

"I know. He needs it back."

She looked at the housekeeper, then at the gardener, and understood that the only way out of the room was to be polite.

She took the key from her bag and set it in my palm.

"You're making this ugly," she said quietly.

"I'm making it simple. Thank you for the coffee."

Her smile held, but it cost her.

I opened the front door and walked her out into a cold morning, and the housekeeper followed us to the porch to watch.

That is where Brennan found us.

He came down the steps in a bathrobe, his hair on end, still half asleep.

"What is going on?"

"Your friend is leaving," I said.

"Lena, for God's sake."

He looked at Bree, who had tears in her eyes and one shoe on, and his face changed.

I knew that face. I had seen it every time she cried in our living room.

"You put her out in the cold in a dress," he said.

"She was in your shirt."

"I told her to stay. Her pipe burst."

"Her pipe is fine. She said it was being fixed. You said she moved out Thursday."

His jaw moved. He had said both things, and neither of us could pretend he hadn't.

"That was our deal," I said. "Out of the house, out of sight."

"You didn't have to humiliate her in front of the staff."

"Brennan."

"She has nowhere to go!"

"She has an apartment and a car and a bank account," I said. "When you divorced me I had a room over a laundromat and a bus pass, and you didn't drive me anywhere."

The gardener looked hard at a leaf bag.

Bree touched Brennan's sleeve.

"It's all right," she said. "I'll go. Please don't fight over me."

She went down the steps in her pink dress and her camel coat, with her head high and the travel mug in her hand, and she looked like the wronged one.

At the end of the walk she turned and glanced back at me.

She was not crying anymore.

"He'll be at my place by Friday," she said, very softly, and left.

I stood on my own front porch holding a key to my own front door.

Brennan stared at me.

"Do you have any idea what you just did?"

"I followed the terms."

"You could have called me. You could have been human about it."

"I was very human. I gave her a coffee."

The housekeeper made a small noise and covered it with a cough.

Brennan pushed past me into the house, taking the stairs two at a time.

I heard drawers opening and closing.

When he came down again he had a bag on his shoulder and a suit over his arm, and he did not look at me.

"I'll be at the office," he said.

"For how long?"

"Until I can stand to be in this house."

The door shut behind him.

The housekeeper picked up the kettle without being asked.

"Mrs. Corrigan," she said carefully. "Would you like eggs?"

It was the first time in fourteen months anyone had called me that and meant it.

"Yes," I said. "Please. And pour yourself one too."

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