You Divorced a Genius Heiress novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Mr. and Mrs. Raines

A courthouse wedding with a ranch widow as witness ends on the steps, where Calla tells the cameras who she is and Desmond answers with a clip of her at eleven.

I woke at six to the smell of coffee and a woman standing at the foot of the spare bed.

She was about five foot two, with a thick white braid pinned round her head and turquoise on every finger.

"You're the wife," she said.

"Calla," I said, and sat up in a borrowed t-shirt. "Not yet. I mean, tonight."

"Odessa Raines. I'm the grandmother. Drink this."

She handed me a mug the size of a flowerpot.

I drank.

It was the strongest coffee I had ever tasted, and I thanked her for it with my eyes watering.

"My grandson says you wrote the thing the whole state runs on," she said.

"I did."

"The monitor on my well pump has blinked red since August. Can you fix it?"

I looked at her face for the joke.

There was none.

"Bring it here," I said.

She came back with a grey box.

I had it open on the bed with a butter knife in under a minute.

"A fouled contact," I said. "Somebody's been using it as a shelf."

"The cat," Odessa said.

She watched me wipe the board, close it, and press the button.

The light went green.

"Hm," she said.

That was her whole review, and then she went out, and I heard her tell Jarrett in the hall, "She'll do."

The courthouse was a grey building with a flag.

The clerk behind the glass had married eleven thousand couples and looked like she believed in none of them.

Jarrett wore a charcoal jacket over his black henley.

I wore the grey gala dress, because it was all I had.

Odessa came in her good boots with a bolo tie she had pinned to her own shirt.

"Names," the clerk said.

"Jarrett Raines."

"Calla Wray."

"Witness?"

"Odessa Raines," Odessa said. "I'm seventy-four, I'm sober, and I think this is the dumbest thing he's ever done."

"Noted," said the clerk.

The vows were over in a minute.

I said mine to a spot on his collar.

He said his to my face, low and steady, with his grey eyes on mine the whole time.

My knees did something stupid.

"By the power vested in me," the clerk said, in the voice of a woman reading a bus schedule. "You may kiss."

Jarrett looked at me.

I looked at the paper in my bag that said nothing here obliges us to touch.

"For the clerk," he murmured.

"For the clerk," I said.

He bent his shaved head.

He kissed me once, lightly, warm and dry, one hand coming up to hold my jaw as though it were something that could break.

It lasted two seconds.

It rearranged something in my chest, and I did not like it.

"Well," said Odessa, pulling a paper tissue from her sleeve. "That was convincing."

"It was for the clerk," I said.

"Mm-hm," said Odessa. "She's got a pen. Sign."

We signed.

Outside, the steps were full.

There were twelve of them with cameras, and two vans, and a woman holding a microphone with the logo of a local news station.

Someone had told them.

I knew who.

Desmond stood at the foot of the stairs in his midnight-blue suit, his hair perfect, his hand at the small of Kiera's back.

Kiera wore white today.

She twisted her chain and did not meet my eyes.

"Mrs. Raines!" the reporter called. "Is it true you married your husband's rival two days after he divorced you?"

Jarrett's hand closed around mine.

I felt it, big and warm, and I understood that he was waiting to see what I would do with it.

I stepped to the microphone.

"My name is Calla Hartsfield," I said.

The cameras went up.

"I wrote Lumen when I was nineteen," I said.

"The woman next to my ex-husband didn't. Ask her what the model was called before it had a name."

Silence.

Then Desmond laughed.

It was a good laugh, warm and surprised, the laugh of a man who has been waiting for his cue.

"Calla, sweetheart," he said, and every camera turned. "I've been so careful with you. But I think it's time they heard it from you."

He took out his phone and touched the screen.

My own voice came out of it, tinny and tired.

"I'm nobody, Des. I like it that way."

I knew the night.

It was our kitchen, in March, after the bid, when I had told him I would not sign it.

He had recorded me.

The reporters laughed, and one of them said, "She said it herself," and the laugh spread down the steps.

Jarrett's hand tightened on mine until it hurt.

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