He Said Children Were a Mistake, So I Ran With His Baby novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: One Mistake He Would Never Make
Elena holds two pink lines in the 41st-floor washroom, then hears Maxim tell the board that children are the one mistake he will never make. She resigns in front of the whole floor, and Margot's text names a town Elena never told her.
At the quarterly board meeting, Maxim Kovalev told forty people that children were the one mistake he would never make.
I was sitting at his right hand with a pregnancy test in my blazer pocket.
Twenty minutes earlier I had been on the floor of the 41st-floor washroom, watching two pink lines come up.
They came up fast, before I could tell myself the first one was a smudge.
Then I washed my hands, fixed my lipstick and went to take the minutes.
The question came from a young woman in marketing, near the foot of the table.
She was holding her tablet in both hands and her voice shook.
"I'm expecting in the spring," she said. "Could we look at the parental leave policy? Six weeks isn't very long."
The room went quiet, and everyone looked at Maxim.
He didn't look up from the quarterly report.
"Leave stays at six weeks," he said. "Children are the one mistake I will never make, and I won't underwrite other people's."
A few of the men laughed.
The young woman sat down very slowly, and her eyes were wet.
I wrote the line into the minutes.
I wrote it word for word, because that is my job, and my hand did not shake at all.
I have run his calendar for six years.
Every March 3rd he clears it and goes where nobody can reach him, and I have never asked where.
I had never seen him near a child, and I'd assumed it was simply who he was.
Margot Beekman found me by the coffee service when the meeting broke.
She sat on our board and had once been married to him, and she was the one person in the building who always seemed glad to see me.
"You're green," she said. "Sit."
She pulled a flask from her bag and poured something pale into a paper cup.
"Ginger and lemon. It's the only thing that worked for me when I felt like this." She said it lightly and pressed the cup into my hands. "Whatever you need, Elena, you come to me. I mean it."
I thanked her.
I drank all of it, and it did help.
Maxim's office door was open when I came in, and he was standing at the window with his back to me.
He didn't turn around.
"Close the door."
I closed it.
Four weeks ago, the night the Singapore deal closed, that door had been locked from the inside.
He had put me against it and said my name over and over.
In the morning he buttoned his shirt with his back to me and said, "That was a mistake. It doesn't happen again. I need you to understand that."
Then he asked me to move the Singapore call to nine.
I had said, "Of course."
Now he turned and looked at me, grey eyes level and calm.
"I heard you were unwell at the meeting. If it's what I think it is, it can wait until after the audit."
For one second I almost told him.
I had the test in my pocket, and I could feel its hard plastic edge.
Then I heard his voice again, in the boardroom, saying the one mistake, and the young woman's face going wet.
"It's not what you think," I said.
"Good." He sat down and pulled a file toward him. "Then we're fine."
I looked at the bottom left drawer of his desk, the one he always kept locked.
Then I took my laptop out of my bag and typed one paragraph.
I printed it, signed it and laid it on top of the Singapore folder.
He read it twice.
"What is this?"
"My resignation," I said. "Effective now."
He stood up. "Elena."
"Everything is in the shared drive. The handover log is dated and signed. Whoever replaces me can have it in an afternoon."
"You can't just leave."
"Watch me," I said.
So I left.
I walked through the 41st floor with my bag on my shoulder and every head turning.
The young woman from marketing watched me pass, and I touched her shoulder on the way.
I handed my badge to the guard in the lobby.
He said, "Are you all right, Ms. Bruni?" and I told him I was better than I'd been in years.
On the sidewalk I took out my phone to call my grandmother.
A message was already waiting from Margot.
Safe travels to Scranton, Elena. I'll tell Maxim you're with family.
I stood still in the middle of Madison Avenue.
I hadn't told her about Scranton.
I hadn't told anyone, not even myself, until I walked through the lobby doors.
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