50 Billion Reasons to Leave You novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Seventh Anniversary
Taken from the anniversary dinner while her husband watches, Kathleen hears him say sit tight, and tells the dealer to deal her in.
My mother-in-law raised her glass in front of two hundred guests and called me the best thing that ever happened to her son.
It was our seventh anniversary, and it was the first time she had said my name into a microphone.
"To Kathleen," she said. "Who has been so patient with this family."
The ballroom of the Rask Grand clapped.
I smiled and held my champagne and didn't drink it, because I was due at the hospital at seven the next morning.
My husband stood beside his father at the head table.
Donovan raised his glass to me and didn't quite meet my eyes.
My best friend found me by the dessert table.
Summer Kettering wore white, the way she always did, and she hugged me so hard my earring caught in her hair.
"Kate, you look tired," she said. "Breathe. Tonight is easy."
"Easy how?"
"Wherever they put you, sit still and smile. Donovan's father has the whole evening handled."
She had been my maid of honor for seven years, so I believed her.
I went to the coat-check corridor to get my phone out of my bag.
The corridor was empty and smelled of floor polish.
Two men in the hotel's service jackets stepped out of the linen room, and one of them put a cloth sack over my head.
I kicked back and hit a shin.
A hand closed over my mouth through the sack and an arm lifted me off the carpet.
The sack slipped when they carried me past the open ballroom doors.
For one moment I saw the whole room upside down.
I saw the photographer lift his camera and lower it again.
I saw Odette, my mother-in-law, turn her back.
I saw Donovan, thirty feet away, looking straight at me.
His father, Lowell, stood next to him with a hand on his son's sleeve, and Donovan did not move.
Then the doors swung shut.
They took me down in a service lift that went much farther than the basement.
When the sack came off, I was standing in a room with no windows and a green carpet.
There were tables under low lamps, and men in suits at the tables stopped playing to look at me.
Nobody seemed surprised.
At the far end of the room a wall of dark glass ran from floor to ceiling, and behind it a man sat alone in a chair.
He was old and thin and wore gray.
A dealer in a black vest came and stood in front of me.
"Mrs. Rask," he said. "You are the guarantee on Lowell Rask's account. Your father-in-law owes the house fifty billion dollars."
"Fifty billion," I said. "He doesn't have that."
"He did," the dealer said. "He lost it. Then he pledged you."
He set a phone on the felt and put it on speaker.
It rang twice.
"Kathleen?"
It was Donovan, and my knees almost gave out at the sound of him.
"They took me," I said. "I'm in a casino under the hotel. They say Lowell pledged me for a debt."
There was a pause long enough that I heard the ballroom behind him.
"Dad says it's a formality," Donovan said. "He says they scare people and nobody gets hurt."
"Donovan, I'm standing here."
"I know. Listen to me. I can't move that kind of money tonight. The board votes Monday and then we'll sort it out."
"Monday is two days away."
"Sit tight until Monday, Kate. Please. Just be good and sit tight."
Behind him a man laughed softly, and I knew the laugh.
"Tell her to behave," Lowell said.
Then a woman's voice, close to the phone and warm as ever.
"Be good, Kate."
The line clicked off.
I stood and looked at the dead phone and thought about every Sunday dinner I had cooked for those four people.
Nobody was coming.
I said it to myself plainly so I would not argue with it later.
Nobody was coming, and I was not going to sit tight.
"What happens to a guarantee on Monday?" I asked.
"If the debt is not paid, she belongs to the house," the dealer said.
"And before Monday?"
"The house offers every guarantee a single hand."
"What does a hand get me?"
For the first time he looked at the glass wall.
"Emmett Slade owns this house," he told me. "That is for him to say."
Behind the glass, the old man in gray gave the smallest nod.
"Deal me in," I said.
The dealer pulled out a chair and I sat down at the empty table.
He slid the deck across the felt.
I cut it and shuffled the way I always had, with a bridge at the end.
Nobody ever taught me that.
Behind the glass, the old man put down his drink and stood up.
The dealer rested two fingers on a black card, face down.
"One hand, Mrs. Rask," he said. "If you win, this marker is yours. All fifty billion of it."
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