Five Hours a Year novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Cooling-Off Agreement

Desmond arrives with a warm agreement for Leah to sign and her cards stop working; she refuses, and Alec's call is cut off by Desmond's voice.

Desmond Marr was on my mother's porch at eight the next morning, holding a tray of coffees and a white bakery box.

"Leah." He opened his free arm, and I let him hug me, because he was fifty-five and had flown in overnight.

"You didn't have to come," I said.

"Of course I did. You're family."

My mother stood behind me in the hall with her cardigan buttoned wrong.

She looked at the bakery box and then at him.

"Donna, I'm so sorry about Ray," Desmond said. "He was a fine man."

"He was," my mother said. "Come in, then."

We sat in the kitchen where my father had eaten breakfast for thirty years.

Desmond took the chair nobody sat in, the one by the window, and my mother's mouth went thin and she said nothing.

"Alec is a mess," Desmond said.

"He was fine at the church."

"He was fine at the church because he's good at being fine. Then he got in the car and called me from the highway, and I couldn't understand a word." He shook his head. "He doesn't know how to do this, Leah. He never learned."

"Do what? Stay for a burial?"

"Be a husband without a clock."

It was a good line.

I almost agreed with it.

He slid a folder across the table, squared it with two fingers, and kept his hand on it a moment.

"I had my assistant draw this up on the plane. It's a cooling-off agreement. Thirty days, no filings, no lawyers on either side. You rest. Alec gets his head straight. Nobody does anything they can't take back."

"Thirty days of what, exactly?"

"Of peace."

I opened the folder, because I had read folders like it for a living once.

The first two pages were just what he'd said.

The third page was not.

Under Household Matters, it said that during the thirty days all joint accounts would be managed by Kittridge & Marr on both parties' behalf.

It said Leah Stallworth acknowledged every invoice issued to her during the marriage as earned and non-refundable.

And it said she released any claim to the account called LT Holdings.

I read that last line twice.

"What is LT Holdings?"

"A tax account. Alec's accountant set it up years ago." Desmond waved a hand. "It's nothing, it's housekeeping. It just keeps things clean while you two rest."

"Alec told me that too."

"Then it's twice as true."

He smiled at me.

It was warm, and it was easy, and I noticed that he hadn't looked at the page once while I read it.

"I'm not signing this today," I said.

"Take your time. Just don't hire anyone, sweetheart. Once lawyers get involved, men like Alec dig in. You know how he is."

I did know how Alec was.

It was just strange to hear it explained to me by someone who had never once asked how I was.

"I'll read it again," I said.

"That's all I ask."

He stayed for one cup of coffee, said he had a noon flight back to New York, and told my mother a story about my father at a bar association dinner in 2009 that I'd never heard.

My mother laughed at the right place.

After he left, she carried his cup to the sink and washed it twice.

"He sat in your father's chair," she said.

"I know."

"Don't sign it."

"I'm a lawyer, Mom."

"You were," my mother said. "I'm saying don't sign it."

At two o'clock I drove her to the pharmacy, because she needed her prescriptions and her hands had started to shake.

At the register, the clerk ran my card.

Declined.

She ran it again.

Declined.

It was the card on the household account, the one I had carried for six years.

I tried the second card, which was linked to it, and then a third.

"I'm sorry," the clerk said, and the line behind me shifted.

I paid in cash from my mother's purse, and she didn't say a word the whole way home.

At the stop sign on Water Street, I opened the banking app.

Every account tied to the household had a red banner across the top.

Access suspended by account administrator.

The administrator was Alec.

My phone rang at eight that night, as my mother and I were washing dishes.

His name came up on the screen.

I dried my hands slowly and answered.

"Leah." His voice was tight. "I have four minutes."

"You froze my cards."

"I didn't. I told Desmond to hold things steady, that's all." I heard a keyboard, quick and steady. "Are you reading the agreement?"

"I am. Who wrote the part about LT Holdings?"

There was a pause on his end.

"Leah, I can't talk about the account."

"You can't, or you won't?"

"Please sign the thirty days. I'll fix it. I'll fix all of it. I just need you to..."

Behind him, close to the phone, someone spoke.

It was a low, friendly voice, and I knew it, because I had listened to it across my mother's kitchen table that morning.

"That's time, Alec. Hang up."

The line went dead.

Desmond had told us he was flying home to New York at noon.

He was in Alec's office at eight at night, standing right at his elbow.

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