Contract Over: You're Free to Go novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: No One Worth Mentioning
At the third-anniversary gala Declan hears his contract wife call him no one, ends the contract aloud and leaves; Timothy says a man asked for Archie by full name.
On our third anniversary, my wife stood in a ballroom with her hand on another man's arm.
I was twenty feet away by the doors, in a grey suit my business partner had pressed that afternoon.
That was where she had told me to stand.
Her text had come at six.
"Come at nine. Stay by the doors until I find you. Trust me tonight, whatever I say."
I had read it twice and decided it was nerves.
The gala filled the whole hotel ballroom with four hundred people in black and a string quartet nobody listened to.
My tattoo sleeve showed below my left cuff.
A woman with a champagne flute looked at it, then at my face, then found something interesting across the room.
I let her.
I had been looked at like that for three years.
Margot came in at ten past nine in a pale green dress.
She was smiling, which I had seen her do for cameras and for my son and almost never for anyone else.
The man beside her was Broderick Lund, her father's lawyer.
He had sandy hair and a navy suit, and her hand rested on his sleeve.
They crossed the floor together, and four hundred people turned to watch them do it.
Her father stood at the center of the room with his silver hair and his soft voice.
Alistair Southwell had never once said my name to my face.
He called me "Margot's arrangement."
I started walking toward her anyway.
Nobody stopped me, because nobody there knew who I was.
A woman in gold stepped into Margot's path.
"Margot, darling, what a night. And who is that? The big one by the door, staring at you."
Margot looked at me.
Her grey eyes met mine, and I waited for her to say my name.
"Oh," she said lightly. "No one worth mentioning."
Broderick laughed.
Two people near him laughed with him.
I stood there with the ring on my finger and my son's school picture in my wallet.
For three years I had signed her papers, worn the suits she picked, and stood where I was told.
I had done it so a surgeon would open my son's chest and fix his heart.
It had worked. Archie was six now and ran everywhere.
The deal had one clause I memorized the day I signed it.
On the third anniversary, either of us could end it by saying so out loud, with no claims either way.
I stopped in front of her.
"Declan," she said, and her voice was not as light as it had been.
I pulled my wedding ring off.
It stuck at the knuckle, and I worked it free while the front of the room went quiet.
I set it on a silver tray beside a stack of cocktail napkins.
"Contract's over," I said. "You're free to go."
Nobody in the ballroom moved.
Margot's hand came off Broderick's arm.
"Declan, listen to me. Please, not here."
"Three years," I said. "Here is exactly where you wanted me."
Her father's face did not change at all.
Broderick said something to her in a low voice, and I did not hear it.
I turned around and walked out through the doors she had told me to stand beside.
Nobody followed me.
On the hotel steps I stood in the cold and found that my hands were shaking.
A valet asked if I wanted a car.
I said no, because my truck was parked three blocks away.
The garage charged forty dollars, and I had been told to look like I belonged.
I walked to it.
Margot's text stayed on my screen the whole way.
Trust me tonight, whatever I say.
I turned the phone face down on the seat and drove to the tattoo shop.
My partner, Timothy Brennan, and his wife had Archie in the flat upstairs.
I had lived in that flat with a baby before any of this, on a lease I could barely pay.
The living room lamp was on.
Archie was asleep on the couch with a library book on his chest and his shoes still on.
His bed at Margot's house had a blue swallow print over it, hung by her the first week.
His mother had worn the same bird on her ribs.
I had never asked where Margot found it. I figured swallows were common.
I picked up my son.
He weighed more every month.
Timothy waited at the top of the stairs with his inked forearms folded.
He looked at my hand and the white band where the ring had been.
"You left it," he said.
"I left it."
"Good." He cleared his throat. "Dec, there's something else."
I stopped on the landing.
"A man came into the shop around five. Grey coat. Very polite."
Timothy lowered his voice so Archie would not stir.
"He didn't want ink. He asked if a boy named Archibald Cronin lived upstairs."
Archie's breath was warm against my neck.
"What did you tell him?"
"That I don't give out the name of anybody's kid," Timothy said.
He looked at the boy in my arms.
"He said that was fine. He said he'd find out another way."
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