My Billionaire Husband Signed Away My Street novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: A Husband Not Included

Amory moves into number 9 with one duffel and two rules, the neighbors reveal that foreclosure notices have been landing on Orchard Row for weeks, and the notice on number 11 is signed by a company Amory flinches at.

Amory showed up on my porch at six o'clock with a duffel bag, a toolbox and a plant.

"It's a pothos," he said.

"The man at the hardware store said you can't kill it."

"Did you tell him you were a gardener?"

"I told him I was married."

He said it flatly and then blinked.

I took the plant.

"You get my father's room," I said.

"Second floor, front, the bed's made. The bathroom's down the hall and the claw-foot tub is the only tub, so we share it."

"Understood."

"The third stair is broken. Step over it."

"I've been stepping over it for six weeks."

I stopped on the threshold.

He had, hadn't he.

Every morning from the sidewalk, with his tripod and his orange stakes, avoiding the third stair as if he already knew where the rot was.

Inside, Gran's house smelled of lemon polish and cold radiators.

I led him up past the photographs.

There was my father at twelve, my father in his mechanic's coveralls, and Gran at her county desk with a pencil in her bun.

He stopped in front of that last one for a long moment.

"She looks like she reads the back of the cereal box," he said.

"She did. She taught me to."

"What was she like?"

"Mean about commas and generous about everything else."

His mouth moved, the beginning of a smile.

I showed him my father's room, and he put the duffel on the bed and didn't unzip it.

The dresser still held my father's reading glasses.

"I can put those away," I said.

"Leave them."

I climbed to my own room under the roof.

I stood there with the pothos until my eyes cleared.

Then the doorbell rang, and kept ringing.

By seven o'clock the front hall held a dozen of my neighbors and four casseroles.

The retired bus driver from next door brought a lasagna the size of a doormat.

The widow from number 14, who has outlived three husbands and a hip, brought a pie.

It had clearly been baked for a funeral and was being recycled.

The barber from across the street brought a bottle of something amber and no apology.

"The whole street saw you go in with that man this morning," the widow said, patting my cheek hard.

"Sixty-one years I've lived here, and I never saw a wedding on this porch."

"It wasn't on the porch," I said.

"It was at the clerk's office."

"It's the same thing with worse lighting."

They filled Gran's kitchen and took over her stove.

Amory stood by the refrigerator holding a paper plate and being appraised.

"He's tall," the widow announced.

"He's got a surveyor's hands. Does he mind a woman who talks?"

"He's listening to every word," I said.

"I'm taking notes," Amory said gravely.

The bus driver snorted into his lasagna.

For ten minutes, with a plate in my hand and my husband beside the fridge, I forgot we were strangers.

Then the barber set his glass on the counter and cleared his throat.

"Pen," he said.

"Your grandmother kept something from you."

The kitchen went quiet in a way that made the dishwasher sound loud.

"She was going to tell you after the funeral," the widow said.

"She said the girl's got enough on her."

"Tell me what?" I said.

The bus driver put down his fork.

"Letters came, honey. Since August. Notices."

"To Gran?"

"To most of the street."

He reached into his jacket and set a folded paper next to the pie.

"Eleven houses so far," the barber said.

"Foreclosure, they say. Missed payments."

"Nobody on this street has missed a payment," the widow said.

"Not in sixty-one years."

I opened the notice.

Behind me, Amory had gone as still as a held breath.

"Number 11," the bus driver said.

"Left on the door of the Army kid, so his mother wouldn't see it."

I read it standing up, because I don't know how to read a legal notice sitting down.

It was two pages of dense type under a compass logo.

CORVANE HOLDINGS LLC.

NOTICE OF ACCELERATION AND INTENT TO FORECLOSE.

Signed at the bottom: G. Todhunter, Chief Operating Officer.

The headings were the usual kind.

The fourth line was not.

"Upon any recorded default on any parcel within the Orchard Row assemblage," I read aloud, "the entire assemblage shall be deemed in default."

"What does that mean?" the widow said.

"It means one missed payment on one house lets them call every house on the street in default at once."

"And somebody's decided there was a missed payment on one house."

I looked up.

Across the kitchen, Amory was staring at the page in my hand.

"You flinched," I said.

"I'm sorry?"

"At line four. You flinched."

"It's a hard clause," he said.

"Have you read a lot of them?"

He held my eyes a moment too long.

"I measure the ground," he said.

"I've seen what they do to it."

Everything in his voice was true, and none of it was an answer.

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