Fifteen Days to Divorce novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Ninth Wedding
Portia, who believed a forum post and crashed nine weddings, is recognized and filmed. Her husband Malachi walks in and tells the hall she is his wife for fifteen more days, then says she sold their contract to a tabloid, and she leaves her ring on the cake table.
At the ninth wedding in six days, Portia Holloway sat at a back table and watched two strangers trade rings.
The bride was crying. The groom's hands were shaking. Two hundred guests clapped.
Nobody burst through the doors to stop it.
Portia turned the plain gold band on her own finger and looked at her plate.
She had eaten nine slices of wedding cake this week, and she had not enjoyed one of them.
Six days ago she had read a post on a gossip forum.
It said Malachi Branigan's marriage was over in everything but paperwork.
It said the woman he truly loved was getting married this week, and he would be there.
Malachi Branigan was her husband.
He had been her husband for three hundred and fifty days, on a one-year contract that ended in fifteen.
She had believed the post because of the terrace.
Every night Malachi whispered into his phone out there, and the only word that carried through the door was a woman's name, "Ellie."
Every time she opened the door, he stopped talking.
Margo Preminger, his publicist, had put Portia on every guest list without asking why.
"Favors are what I do, hon," Margo had said, and had sent a car.
Margo had been kind since the first day, when she had driven Portia to sign the contract in her own car outside a laundromat.
Malachi's page had already been signed, and Portia had never thought twice about it.
Her phone buzzed on the tablecloth.
"Stop checking that forum, hon. Go home and rest. I've handled everything."
Portia typed, "Thank you," and meant it.
"Oh my God," said a woman at the next table.
She was holding up her phone.
"You're her. You're the wife."
"I'm a friend of the bride," Portia said.
The woman turned the screen around.
It showed Portia in a green dress, standing next to a cake at yesterday's wedding.
The caption read, "Malachi Branigan's wife is crashing weddings. Is she okay?"
Under it was a number with a lot of zeros.
Heads were turning.
A man at the next table said, "That's her."
Somebody else said it, and then it went across the hall.
The groom's father came over with two men in black jackets.
"Who invited you?"
"The bride's cousin put me on the list," Portia said.
"I know who you are."
He pointed at the door.
"Out."
"I'm leaving."
"Now."
The doors opened.
Malachi walked in, in a charcoal suit with no tie, his hair wrecked.
Every head in the room turned to him.
He did not look at any of them. He crossed the dance floor and looked only at Portia.
The post had been right, she thought. He had shown up at a wedding. He just hadn't come for any other woman.
"Mr. Branigan," the groom's father said. "Your wife has been following my family all week."
Malachi said, "She's my wife."
He stopped. He never used more words than he had to in front of people.
Then he said, "For fifteen more days."
The hall went silent.
Phones went up, all around her, a hundred small black windows.
Portia stood.
She pulled the gold band off her finger. It left a pale ring on her skin.
She walked to the cake table and laid the ring on a white plate next to the cake knife.
"That's clause nine," she said. "Neither of us says what this is to anyone. You just said it to two hundred people."
Malachi's jaw tightened.
"You sold it first," he said, low, so only she could hear.
"I did what?"
"Margo showed me the email. You sold the whole contract to a tabloid for forty thousand dollars."
Portia looked at him for a long second.
She had never written to a tabloid in her life.
So she left the ring where it lay.
She walked out through the middle of the hall, past every phone, and he did not stop her.
In the parking lot her phone buzzed again.
"Don't say a word to anyone. I'm on my way to you."
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