Divorced, Now Watch Me Rise novel · Chapter 15 of 24
Chapter 15: The Vote
"Mr. Chairman," I said, "may I answer that?"
The chairman looked at the table.
"Mrs. Buckley holds a proxy in this room," he said. "She may."
I did not sit down.
I took the spare phone out of my clutch and set it on the glass, facing the board.
"This was recorded in my husband's garage," I said. "Dalton, you can stop me any time."
He smiled.
I pressed play.
The sound was thin and echoing, but the voice was not.
"Get rid of it, or I'll get rid of you."
A woman at the far end put her hand over her mouth.
On the recording Brogan's fist landed, and Dalton's tooth hit the concrete.
Nobody laughed.
Dalton had stopped smiling.
"That was a private argument," he said. "She provoked me."
"You're very provoked for a man who was drunk on Sunday and so sober in a garage," I said.
Vera's hand tightened on his sleeve.
"The board didn't come to hear a woman's grievances," she said. "It came to vote on a technicality."
"Then I'll bring someone with no grievance," I said, and I opened the door.
Lydia came in with Hattie at her shoulder.
She still wore the grey dress.
She kept the blanket around her arm, and she stopped beside the table and let it fall.
The whole board looked at four bruises.
"Miss Coldwell," the chairman said slowly.
"Dalton wasn't drunk on Sunday," Lydia said. Her voice shook, and then it didn't. "He drank water at that dinner. I know, because I was in the car outside waiting for him."
"Lydia," Dalton said.
"He asked those two gentlemen to dinner on purpose." She pointed at the old board member and the younger one. "He told me in the car on the way there. He said he'd throw her out in front of witnesses so she couldn't fight the divorce. He thought it would be the end of her."
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