Madly Yours novel · Chapter 13 of 32

Chapter 13: Out Loud

I read every word off her mouth.

Then I looked at the phone in her hand.

The thread on the screen was long, grey bubbles stacked on grey bubbles.

The number at the top had a 415 area code.

I'd seen that number in Leland's closet, pinned under his uncle's photo.

The reporter's phone was pointed at my face.

The neighbor with the dog hadn't moved.

I took out my notepad and wrote slowly, in capitals, so it would photograph well.

I SIGNED EVERY PAGE. I SIGNED I DO IN FRONT OF FORTY PEOPLE.

I turned it to the reporter.

Then I wrote one more line under it.

ASK THE FORTY PEOPLE.

Lexi's mouth fell open.

Leland laughed, high and delighted.

"She writes," he told Lexi. "Did nobody tell you? She writes everything down."

He tapped the pad with one long finger.

"I'm keeping that one. I'll frame it next to my straitjacket."

Then he walked me down the steps to the car, slow, on the cane, and didn't look back once.

The second the door shut, the cane went on the floor.

He took my pad out of my hands and read the page again.

"That's a 415 number," he said. "Did you see it?"

I nodded.

"I know whose it is."

So do I.

He sat back against the seat and shut his eyes.

His driver pulled away from the curb.

"Here's what his lawyer will say," Leland said quietly. "You can't hear the vows. You can't speak them. You can't read the contract well enough to understand it."

"So you never consented. So it's void."

"Then he asks a judge to make him my guardian, and the guardian signs the annulment for me."

He opened his eyes.

"And the eleven million comes back due on your family the next morning."

I took the pad back.

My hand was steady, which surprised me.

It was steady because I wasn't scared anymore.

I was angry, and the anger had a direction.

I wrote: What does a judge look at?

He hesitated.

"Whether we've lived as married people."

Separate rooms.

"Separate rooms," he agreed. "My uncle's staff counts the sheets."

I looked out the window at the fog coming over the hill.

I thought about my mother putting a salad bowl down and saying Lexi was always meant to be a Halstead.

I thought about Leland's foot touching mine under her table.

Just once.

I held the pad up between us.

Make it real.

He read it.

He didn't smile.

He leaned forward and pressed the button that raised the glass between us and the driver.

Then he turned to me with his whole body.

"No," he said.

I stared at him.

"Not for a judge. Not for my uncle. Not because your mother sold you a second time."

His voice went lower.

"I'm not doing that to you. I'd rather lose the company."

I took the pen and wrote under my own line.

Not for a judge. For me.

He looked at the page for a long time.

I watched it land.

"You don't touch me unless I ask," he said. "Your term. Your handwriting."

I'm asking.

He reached out and took the pad gently out of my hand.

He put it face down on the seat.

He put the pen on top of it.

"Then ask me out loud."

My throat closed up.

Day twelve.

Soft words only, a few at a time.

"Not the pad," he said. "Not your hands. I need to hear it come out of you."

"Yes or no. Whichever one it is, I'll live with it."

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came for a second.

Then it came, cracked down the middle, barely more than breath.

"Yes."

He shut his eyes like I'd hit him.

When he opened them, they were very dark.

"Again," he whispered.

I leaned across the seat until my mouth was at his ear.

"Leland," I said. "Yes."

He didn't kiss me in the car.

He held my hand on his knee all the way up the hill, so hard my wedding ring dug in, and looked straight ahead.

Gran was out at her Tuesday cards.

The housekeepers were in the kitchen with the radio on.

He walked me up the main stairs in front of all of them, no cane, his hand on the small of my back.

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