He Gave Our Family Speech With His Ex, So I Took the Mic novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Jill's Couch

Holly has 214 dollars and a friend's couch, then Ross Ellery tells her at the school gate that no meeting existed and that Derek has told work she moved out.

Jill lived in a two-room apartment above a laundromat, and the whole place smelled like warm dryer sheets.

She had made up the couch with a quilt and a stack of her own pillows before we even got there.

June fell asleep in the car and woke up long enough to eat three bites of toast.

"Aunt Jill," she said, with her mouth full, "do you know why pancakes are bad at secrets?"

"No, bug," Jill said. "Why?"

"Because they always spill the beans."

"That's a pancake joke about beans."

"I know," June said, pleased with herself. "I'm still working on it."

Jill laughed so hard she had to put her cup down.

I laughed too, and the sound surprised me.

It was the first time all day that my chest had loosened.

At nine, June was asleep on the pillows with the blue rabbit under her chin and her backpack in her arms.

I tried once to slide it off her.

She woke up, wide-eyed, and gripped it tighter.

"It's okay," I whispered. "It's just a bag."

"It's mine," she said, and went back under.

I let her keep it.

Jill and I sat at her counter with the one lamp on.

"Tell me what you have," she said.

I opened my banking app.

The joint account said it was frozen.

My own checking account, the small one from before we married, said two hundred and fourteen dollars.

"That's it?" Jill asked.

"My paycheck lands on Friday," I said. "It's four hundred after the insurance."

"I have six hundred in savings."

"I'm not taking your savings."

"It isn't a question," Jill said. "I've watched you give that man everything for nine years. Let somebody give you something."

"There's more," I said. "He taped a custody petition to my front door."

"On what grounds?"

"My public breakdown at a school function."

"Then we answer it in court," Jill said. "I know a family lawyer who owes me a favor. I'll call her at eight."

She turned her phone around.

"And we answer it with this."

It was the video.

I watched my own back climb the steps in her shaky frame, heard my own voice say, I'm the wife of the man who just thanked his family.

Derek's face stayed completely smooth through all of it.

"It has two thousand views already," Jill said. "Somebody put it online. I didn't."

"Is it bad?"

"It's you saying true things loudly," she said. "People love that."

I put my head down on her counter and, for the first time since the gym, I cried.

Jill rubbed my back and didn't say anything smart.

In the morning, I walked June to the gate of her school myself.

I had never seen the front lawn look so crowded.

Parents watched us pass.

A few smiled at me, and one mother squeezed my arm.

Others turned away and whispered.

Gwen was nowhere in sight, and neither was the little boy.

At the gate, a man in a gray overcoat stepped out from beside a black sedan.

I knew the face before I knew why.

He was the man who had stopped clapping.

"Mrs. Kane," he said. "Ross Ellery. I run Ellery Mutual."

His voice was low and even, and he didn't offer his hand.

June stepped behind my leg.

"Mr. Ellery," I said. "If you're here to explain that my husband works for you, I know."

"I'm here because yesterday morning I was told you couldn't attend," he said. "Your husband said you were out of town. He said he would speak for the family."

I stared at him.

"There was no business meeting," Ross Ellery said. "I checked my calendar and his. Nothing was scheduled. I sponsored that event, and I sat in the front row to hand your husband an award nomination."

"Derek told me you were having a meeting."

"I know. I'd like to know why he told both of us something different."

A bell rang across the lawn.

June tugged my hand.

"Mommy, I'm going to be late," she whispered.

I knelt and fixed her collar.

"Go on," I said. "Aunt Jill is at the front desk."

She looked up at Ross Ellery for one second, then away.

Then she ran for the doors with her backpack bouncing.

I straightened up.

"You sat in the front row," I said, "and you clapped."

"I did," he said. "I believed him."

He said it flatly, and he didn't look away.

He tucked his hands in his coat pockets.

"One more thing. On Monday, your husband told my HR director that you moved out a month ago."

The cold went all the way through me.

"Moved out," I said.

"He said you were separating. He asked them to keep it quiet until the award was settled."

A mother walked by with a stroller and glanced at us.

I felt the lawn tilt very slightly.

"Mrs. Kane," Ross Ellery said, and for the first time his voice was not even. "Did you move out?"

I understood, standing in the cold, that my husband had been telling people a story about my life for a month.

And I was the last person to hear it.

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