He Hid Me Twelve Years and Paraded Her, So I Quit Both novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Drawer

Walter shows Nell a drawer of offers declined in her name, and Everett walks in.

Walter Stroud lived in a gray stone townhouse in Lincoln Park with a brass knocker shaped like a pear.

He opened the door himself, in a cardigan, with a cane he did not seem to be using.

"Miss Garrity," he said. "Finally."

He held out his hand, and I shook it, because I did not know what else to do.

"You look exactly like your photograph," he said.

"I've never given you a photograph."

"Bea has a very good phone."

He led me into a study that smelled of pipe tobacco and old paper.

A tray of tea was already waiting on a table between two leather chairs.

On the wall behind the desk hung a photo of Everett at twenty-one, grinning on a sailboat.

I looked at it for a second too long, and Walter noticed.

"Sit, please. I'll pour. I'm told you left my son yesterday in front of a hundred witnesses."

"A hundred and forty," I said. "Plus two assistants."

He laughed, a short bark that surprised us both.

"Bea said you'd be funny. Good. I've been very short on funny people since the board got younger."

He handed me a cup and sat down across from me with a small groan.

"I have to start by saying something unflattering about myself," he said. "Twelve years ago, Everett told me he was seeing a girl from the intern class. A clever one. He said you were shy and wouldn't come to the house."

"I never said that."

"I know that now. Then I asked him to bring you to dinner three times."

"I never heard it."

"No. I gathered." He set his cup down. "I should have driven to your door myself. I was busy and he was my son, so I believed him. That's on me, and I'm sorry."

I did not know what to do with an apology from a man I had met four minutes ago.

"You don't owe me that," I said.

"I owe you more. Which is why I invited you here."

He got up, slower than he needed to, and went to his desk.

He unlocked the bottom drawer with a small brass key.

Inside was a green folder as thick as a phone book.

"Four years ago I told Everett to promote you to director," he said. "He said you'd refused."

"Refused what?"

"The title. You wanted to stay in his group, he said. You preferred the work to the politics."

"Walter, I would have taken that title the same day."

"I believe you." He put the folder in my lap. "I had my own assistant, Bea, keep copies of every offer I authorized for you. The ones with your name on the letter. She didn't tell me why she kept them. I think she didn't trust the answers either."

I opened the folder.

The first page was a letter from Walter's office offering me a place on the strategy committee, dated six years ago.

At the bottom, in a neat blue pen, someone had written: Declined at employee request. E.S.

I turned the page.

Director of client strategy. Declined at employee request. E.S.

Turned it again.

A raise of fifteen percent. Declined at employee request. E.S.

A bonus for the Harlan account, two years in a row.

A vice president's seat, offered in March.

Every page had the same four words and the same two letters.

I read them all.

I read the one from March twice, because it was dated three weeks before Everett told me, kindly, to wait for next quarter.

"He told me you'd said no," Walter said. "In person. To my face. He said you were happy."

"I didn't say no to any of it."

"I know." His voice was soft. "I knew when I watched the video."

"What video?"

"The company channel. Someone sent it to me at nine last night." He tapped his glasses. "You stood at the back holding that cake and you clapped for her. A woman who chose a small job doesn't clap like that."

My hands were not steady on the folder.

I had spent twelve years being told that nobody had noticed me.

All that time, a letter with my name on it had been landing on his desk, and he had been signing it away.

"Why would he do this?" I asked.

"I don't know yet." Walter looked at the photo of his son. "I thought you might."

"I don't."

"Then we're two people with the same question."

There was a sound in the hall.

A key in the front door, which only one person besides Walter had.

Walter closed his eyes briefly.

"I should have told you," he said. "Bea's phone isn't the only one that knows where you are. He has your location, hasn't he?"

"He put it on my phone five years ago," I said. "For safety."

Heavy footsteps crossed the marble floor toward the study.

I stood up with the folder still open in my hands.

The study door swung wide, and Everett stood in the doorway in yesterday's shirt.

He looked at me, then at his father, and then at the green folder.

His face did not change for a long moment.

"Dad," he said. "What did you tell her?"

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