Was Our Marriage Your Revenge? novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Box

Guards walk Frank out of Corr Capital with his desk in a box. Claire confronts Quentin in front of the staff, and Quentin says Frank's loan call killed his father. Frank doesn't say no.

Gretchen lowered her phone, gave me a small wave across the street, and drove away.

"She was probably checking that you got home," Rhiannon said.

I let her say it, because it was easier than saying what I thought.

My father called at seven the next morning.

"Claire, there are men with boxes in my office," he said. His voice was thin. "They say I have until nine."

I ran out the door with one shoe on and the other in my hand.

Corr Capital had sat on the same corner of LaSalle Street for forty years.

My father's name was cut into the stone over the doors.

When I pushed through the lobby, every employee in the building stood in a half circle around the atrium, and nobody was working.

Two security guards in black blazers were walking my father across the marble floor.

One of them carried his cardboard box.

On top of the box lay the framed photograph from his desk, me at my college graduation, squinting in a rented gown.

"Dad."

He saw me, and his shoulders came up, and he tried to stand straighter.

"It's all right, sweetheart. It's only a misunderstanding."

"Mr. Corr, please keep moving," the guard said.

The oldest teller, who had given me lollipops at her window when I was six, covered her mouth and started to cry.

Above us on the mezzanine, Quentin stood at the glass rail in a charcoal suit.

His voice carried to every corner.

"As of this morning, Corr Capital is part of Holloway Group. Mr. Corr is no longer an officer. Everyone else keeps their position. Nobody here needs to worry."

A few people clapped.

They clapped, because he had just told them they'd keep their paychecks.

Gretchen stood at his elbow with her tablet and gave the room a small, grateful nod.

Nobody looked at my father.

He kept walking, and he kept his chin up.

That was what made me cross the floor.

I let go of the shoe, and it hit the marble behind me.

"Quentin."

He looked down, and for one second his face did something I could not read.

Then it went smooth again.

"Claire. You shouldn't be here. You should be resting."

My hand had gone flat against my stomach without my asking it to.

His eyes dropped to it and came back up.

I pulled my hand away and put it in my coat pocket.

"You took his name off his own building," I said, loud enough for the balcony to hear. "You ate at his table for six years. He taught you how to read a balance sheet."

"He did," Quentin said. "I paid attention."

A murmur ran through the staff.

My father said, "Claire, don't."

I didn't stop.

Above us, Gretchen said into the lobby phone, "Security, please clear the atrium," in her calm, helpful voice.

Nobody moved.

Every person in that room was waiting to hear what Frank Corr's daughter would say next.

"What did he ever do to you? Tell me. In front of all these people who've worked for him for thirty years. What did Frank Corr ever do to you?"

Quentin came down the glass stairs one step at a time.

He walked right up to me, and I smelled his soap, the one I had bought him in March.

I hated that I knew it.

"You want to know?" he said.

He said it softly, and somehow that was worse than shouting.

"Twelve years ago, my father's firm needed a bridge loan. Your father's bank called it in on a Friday. My father was dead within the month."

The atrium went so quiet I could hear the elevator cables.

"I was twenty-one," Quentin said. "I stood at his grave in a borrowed suit."

"Your father didn't even send flowers."

Behind me, someone sucked in a breath.

I shook my head.

"That's not possible. My father would never do that."

"Ask him."

His eyes slid past me to my father.

"Ask him what he did to my father, Claire. Ask him in front of everyone."

I turned around.

My father stood in the middle of the marble floor with his box in his arms and his reading glasses hanging from the cord on his neck.

He was sixty-three years old, and he looked like a man who had been waiting a very long time for someone to say it out loud.

"Dad," I said.

He looked at me, and then at the floor.

"Dad, tell him it isn't true."

The guards had stopped walking.

The employees were not breathing.

My father opened his mouth.

Nothing came out.

He didn't say no.

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