Everyone Knew She'd Leave Me but Me novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Two Weeks

I had a lawyer's name written on my hand before she finished reading the petition out loud.

Erin sat cross-legged on the hotel bed in my shirt, with her phone in her lap.

"Half," she said. "He wants half of the money he took from me."

"I know a woman at a firm downtown. Maggie's friend's mother. She'd take it Monday, and I'd pay the retainer, and by Friday-"

"Warner."

I stopped, with the pen still in my fist.

"I know you want to fix it," she said, not unkindly. "I'm glad you do. But I'm a grown woman who wrote the check, and I'd like to be the one who shreds this."

My ears went warm.

"I'm managing you."

"You're about to."

"Sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Ask me instead."

I put the pen down.

"What do you want me to do?"

She smiled at me, slowly.

"Come to the meeting," she said. "Sit in the chair. Don't say a word unless he does something stupid."

"That I can do."

She picked up her phone again, and read the other message, the one she had been saving.

"The head of pharmacy at Maggie's hospital emailed me at seven," she said. "Maggie gave them my résumé on Wednesday. Without asking me."

"She does that."

"They'd like to hire me." Her voice had a funny edge. "Starting in two weeks, if I want it."

I stayed very still.

I had a hundred things I could say, and I knew exactly which one was the wrong one.

"Do you want it?" I said.

"I don't know yet."

"Okay."

"That's all you're going to say?"

"I'd like you to stay," I said. "I'd like it a lot. But if I say it first, you'll hear me, not you. So I'm saying only 'okay.'"

She looked at me for a long moment.

Then she leaned across the bed and put her forehead against my chest.

The settlement meeting was Thursday at the company's law firm, in a glass room with a long table and a plate of cookies nobody touched.

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