Mom Let Me Marry the Security Guard novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Envelope at the Door

Claire settles into Ethan's flat and notices his locked case. Grayson arrives with cash to make Ethan disappear, and Ethan hands it back in front of the neighbors. Aunt Beatrice calls.

By noon, my paintings were stacked against the walls of Ethan's flat, and there was no room left to walk.

He had cleared his closet, his shelf, and half of his kitchen floor for them.

He owned two plates, one pan, and a single framed photograph turned face down on the dresser.

Under the bed sat a black steel case with two brass locks.

I noticed it when I bent to push a canvas out of the way.

"What's in that?" I asked.

"Work."

"Security guards need locks like that?"

"Some do."

He did not say another word about it, and he moved the case into the closet with his foot.

I let it go.

I was too tired to be suspicious of the only man who had helped me.

That night he laid a folded blanket on the floorboards beside the bed, and I stood over him in my borrowed gray T-shirt.

"The terms say separate beds," I said. "They don't say you have to sleep on the floor."

"The terms also say you don't have to sleep near me."

"You're six foot two."

"I've slept in worse," he said, and he turned off the lamp.

In the dark I heard him breathing slowly and evenly, like a man who had practiced it.

I thought: he is not afraid of anything.

I did not yet understand that this was a clue.

The knock came the next morning at nine.

Three hard raps, then a pause, then a fourth.

Ethan looked through the peephole and went very still.

"Who is it?"

"Your husband's problem," he said, and he opened the door.

Grayson stood on the landing in a camel coat that cost more than the building's rent.

Behind him, the downstairs neighbor was dragging a laundry cart up the stairs, and the old man from across the hall had cracked his door.

Grayson did not seem to notice.

"Claire," he said, and put on his best smile. "Thank God. I've been calling you for two days."

"I blocked you."

"I know. That's why I came." He held up a thick white envelope. "Let's all be adults."

"What is that?"

"It's fifty thousand dollars," he said to Ethan, as if I were not there. "Cash. All you have to do is take it and leave this city tonight."

"The marriage was a joke. Her mother made a point. The point is made. Nobody has to be hurt."

I heard the cart stop on the stairs.

The old man across the hall leaned out further.

Ethan did not look at the envelope.

"You came to buy a man out of his own wife," he said.

"Don't make it ugly. Fifty thousand is more than you make in two years."

"It is."

Grayson smiled wider. "Then we understand each other."

Ethan took the envelope.

My stomach dropped.

I had not been this sure of a stranger since the ballroom, and I thought I was about to lose it.

Ethan held the envelope in both hands, weighed it once, and put it back against Grayson's chest.

"Take it home," he said, loudly enough for the stairwell. "Spend it on the woman you were cheating with while you were engaged to my wife."

Grayson went white.

"I never," he started.

"Your driver told my friend at the garage that you kept a second set of keys at an apartment on Fulton." Ethan's voice was perfectly calm. "I don't know if that's true. Do you?"

The downstairs neighbor said, "Oh, honey."

The old man across the hall shut his door with a delighted bang.

"Get out of my building," Ethan said.

Grayson stood there with a face the color of paper, holding fifty thousand dollars in front of five witnesses.

Then he turned and clattered down the stairs, and the cart woman pressed herself to the wall to let him pass.

I started to laugh.

It came out of me in a rush, and it hurt, and I put my hand against the doorframe.

The frame had a splintered edge.

A long strip of wood bit into my palm.

"Ow."

Ethan closed the door, took my wrist, and turned my hand up to the light.

The cut was a thin red line, with a sliver of wood still in it.

"Sit," he said.

I sat on the edge of the bed, and he knelt in front of me with a first aid kit from under the sink.

He pulled the splinter out with tweezers, and I hissed.

"Sorry."

"Don't be."

His thumb held my wrist still.

It was a large, rough hand, and he handled mine as if it were one of my canvases.

He cleaned the cut, dried it, and wound a bandage around my palm twice.

Then he did not let go.

I looked at his hand.

He looked at mine.

"The terms," he said quietly.

"Right," I said. "The terms."

He let go.

My palm burned in a way that had nothing to do with the cut.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand, an unknown number.

I almost let it ring out.

"Claire, dear," said an older woman's voice, dry and clipped. "It's your Aunt Beatrice. I have seen the video, and I am furious."

"I want to see you tonight. Bring your husband if you must."

"And Claire?"

"Yes?"

"Come hungry. You'll want to hear what I have to say about your sister's painting."

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