He Sent Me Overseas to Marry Her, I'm Staying Overseas to Never See Him Again novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Tuesday

Laura routes work back to the starved workshop while photos of Pierce's courthouse wedding arrive, blocks him, and then hears his voice on the workshop phone: certify by Friday.

I read it standing up, with my coat still on.

Clause nine was half a page long.

Garland could close the Haddon workshop only if the Head of International certified in writing that it had failed financially.

If the arch closed without that certificate, every right to the Haddon name went back to the family for one pound.

If the Haddon name went on anything not made in this arch, same thing. One pound.

The last line said the clause ended on the day a certified closure was signed.

I read that line twice.

"So with my signature," I said, "the clause dies. And he can put your name on whatever he likes."

"Now she gets it," Oliver said.

"Without my signature, he can't close you at all."

"He can starve us." He tapped the table. "He's been doing it for a year and a half. Ask her how many orders came in this month."

"Four," Peggy said. "Three of them were the vicar's."

"Who wrote clause nine?"

Nobody answered.

Peggy picked up her needle and went back to work.

I slept that night in Peggy's back bedroom under a quilt that smelled of lavender and coal smoke.

I didn't dream about Pierce.

I didn't dream at all.

On Monday I sat in the glass office with the books.

They were real books, green ledgers in Peggy's handwriting, plus a laptop that took four minutes to wake up.

I read eighteen months of them with a pencil behind my ear.

Garland's repair work had gone to a contractor in Leicester.

Garland's monogramming had gone to a machine shop in Essex.

Every trunk Garland had sold in Britain for eighteen months had been bought in, finished, from somewhere else.

The arch had lost £310,000 on paper last year.

It hadn't failed.

It had been starved on purpose, one order at a time, by a man who sent me flowers every Friday.

I found the routing instructions in the shared drive.

Every one of them was signed by the Head of International.

The post had sat empty for two years.

Pierce had been signing as the Head of International himself.

At ten past seven on Tuesday morning, I wrote an email to Leicester and Essex and both of Garland's London order desks.

Effective today, all UK repair, monogram and trunk work for Garland Travel Goods routes to Haddon & Sons, Bermondsey.

I signed it with my new title.

Then I printed it out and pinned it to the board by the doors.

The old cutter read it first.

He was in his sixties, with forearms like rope, and he read it with his lips moving.

Then he called the others over.

The two apprentices read it with their heads together.

They were both nineteen, a boy with a shaved head and a girl with a pencil through her bun.

The six bench workers read it in a line.

Oliver came in last with a bacon sandwich in each hand.

He read it.

He read it again.

He looked at me through the glass for a long time, chewing.

Then he walked into the office and put one of the sandwiches on my desk.

"That's not a thank you," he said.

"I didn't think it was."

"It's a sandwich."

"I can see that."

He left.

It was a very good sandwich.

By noon the first van from Leicester pulled into the lane with forty bags for repair.

The whole arch went out to watch it unload, like it was a parade.

At three in the afternoon my phone buzzed on the cutting table.

It was Zoe.

"MS KENDRICK WHAT IS THIS"

Then a photo came through.

The courthouse steps on Centre Street, bright morning sun.

Madison Burke in a short white dress and a veil clipped to her waves.

Pierce beside her in his navy suit, laughing, one hand on her waist.

And off to the side, holding the bouquet in both fists like it might go off, Zoe in her yellow puffer jacket.

A second message.

"She grabbed me in the elevator and said I was the witness. I didn't know. I swear on my life I didn't know."

A third.

"Are you okay? Do you want me to throw this bouquet into the Hudson?"

I was still looking at the photo when a text from Pierce dropped in on top of it.

"Miss you, babe. Back-to-back meetings all day. Call you tonight."

I looked at those two things for a while.

Then I forwarded him the photo.

Under it I typed a single line.

"Congratulations."

I watched it deliver.

I watched the dots appear and disappear.

Then I opened his contact and blocked him, and set the phone face down on the table.

When I looked up, Peggy was watching me from her bench.

She didn't ask.

She held out the brown teapot, and I went and got my mug.

The repairs took the rest of the afternoon.

At six, when the light in the doors had gone orange, the old black phone on the office wall rang.

Nobody ever rang that phone.

Oliver picked it up, listened, and his face went hard.

He held the receiver out across the office toward me.

"For you."

I took it.

"You blocked me," Pierce said. "That's very mature."

His voice was warm and easy, the voice he used on investors.

"Look. It's done, it's paperwork, I'll explain everything. But I need that certificate."

The trains went over.

The tools rattled on their hooks.

"Certify by Friday, Laura."

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