He Chose Her. I Chose Divorce novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: One in the Morning
A deputy and Russell's security man arrive at the door; Maggie faces them in the porch light and takes Ben's offer of a drafting table. Russell's voicemail says he has put Camille out, and Camille's voice is in the background.
The headlights came up the shore road at one in the morning.
I was awake, because I hadn't slept properly since the hospital.
I watched them from Gran's kitchen window as two cars turned in at the gate, one with a light bar on the roof and one long and black with Illinois plates.
I put on my grandmother's brown cardigan and went out to the porch before they could knock.
A sheriff's deputy got out of the first car, a heavy man in his fifties with a flashlight and an embarrassed face.
A man in a charcoal overcoat got out of the second.
I knew him.
He was Russell's security man, the one who stood by the elevator at company parties and never ate anything.
"Ms. Rooney?" the deputy said. "Sorry for the hour. We have a request to check on your welfare."
"From whom?"
"From the Cook County court. It says you may be missing and unwell."
"I'm standing on my own porch," I said. "I'm neither."
The man in the overcoat stepped forward.
"Mrs. Tamblyn, your husband is very worried. We'd like to come inside and make sure you're safe."
"My name is Maggie Rooney."
"Ma'am."
"I'm thirty-four years old. I know today's date and who the President is. I left my husband four days ago. My lawyer filed for divorce the same morning."
I was shaking, but my voice stayed level, and I could hear it staying level.
"I'm not missing," I said. "He knows exactly where I am, since he sent you."
The deputy shifted his feet.
"Ma'am, I have to ask if I can look around inside."
"No, you may not. I don't consent, and I'd like that written in your report."
He wrote it down.
The man in the overcoat lifted his phone and took a photo of me in the porch light.
I looked straight into it.
"Delete that," I said.
"For Mr. Tamblyn's records."
"It's not his record to keep."
A second set of boots crossed the gravel.
Ben came out of the dark in a flannel shirt with his flashlight pointed at the ground and stopped at the bottom of my steps.
He didn't say anything to me.
"Evening, Deputy," he said.
"Ben." The deputy cleared his throat. "Sorry. Chicago called the sheriff."
"She look unwell to you?"
"No."
"Does she look missing?"
"Not from here," the deputy said.
Ben turned his head to the man in the overcoat.
"I've known her grandmother's house my whole life. You've been standing on its lawn for six minutes with no warrant."
"We have a court order for a welfare check."
"A check," Ben said. "She's been checked."
Nobody spoke for a moment.
The deputy shut his notebook.
"Mr. Tamblyn's people can file whatever they like with the county," he said, not looking at either of them. "But she's an adult and she's said no. We're done here."
The man in the overcoat lowered his phone.
"He'll want a word from you," he said to me.
"Tell him one thing," I said. "Tell him I'm not coming back, and tell him I'll answer his lawyers' letters, and nothing else."
He went back to the black car without a word.
Both sets of taillights went down the shore road and were gone.
I sat down on the top step, because my knees had stopped working.
Ben sat down beside me, a careful distance away.
"That was well done," he said.
"I was terrified."
"I know. It didn't show."
We watched the dark water for a while.
"Is it true," he said finally, "that you're thirty-four?"
"I'm hardly going to lie to a sheriff."
"You looked about nineteen when you were counting out bills."
"I felt about nineteen."
That got a short laugh out of him.
I had been wiping my hands on Gran's cardigan, and I noticed I'd drawn on the porch rail with my fingernail without knowing it.
A long curve, with a straight line across it.
"That's a hull," Ben said.
"It's a roofline. I was trying to work out how to fix the pitch."
"It's a hull." He tilted his head. "You've trained."
"I was three semesters from an architecture degree," I said. "Eleven years ago. I stopped to help my husband with something, and I never went back."
"What was the something?"
I considered not telling him.
"A freight company," I said. "I wrote the first routing program for it at our kitchen table. Four hundred lines, over one winter, so he could win his first contract. Every article since says he built it alone in a garage."
"Did he?"
"He doesn't own a garage."
Ben didn't laugh this time.
"My draftsman retired in August," he said. "I draw every hull by hand, and I'm bad at it. There's a table at the back of the shop with good light."
"I haven't touched a pencil in eleven years."
"You drew a hull on a porch rail ten minutes ago."
I looked at the curve I'd scratched into the wood.
I thought about the first version of the program, with my name nowhere on it, and the sixty floors of his tower with only his name on the door.
"What would you pay?" I asked.
"Fair wage. Your own name on the drawings."
"My name."
"On every one," he said.
I put out my hand.
He shook it, and neither of us let go as fast as we should have.
When I went back inside it was almost two.
My phone, on the table beside Gran's teacup, lit up with a voicemail from Russell.
It was the fifteenth since I'd left, and the first I had played.
I pressed it.
"Maggie." His voice was low and wrecked. "I put Camille out tonight. I told her to pack and I'm sorry for all of it. Come home. I'll do anything."
He drew a breath.
Behind him, soft and clear, a woman's voice said: "Russ, your tea's going cold."
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