He Sent Me the Green Dress, So I Took His Company novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Unwell

Emmett catches her outside the steakhouse and says Gavin has told the board she is confused for a year; at home Gavin waits with the family doctor and the short ribs are gone.

"Mrs. Reyburn. Tilda. Wait."

Emmett Rourke had followed me out of the restaurant without his coat.

I stood beside my car with my keys in my fist and my phone already in my hand.

I pressed record and held it low, where he could see it.

"You can tape me," he said. "I'd rather you did."

"Why are you out here?"

"Because that table was a trap, and I walked into it too."

He rubbed the burn scar on his left forearm, a habit I remembered from my father's loading dock.

Emmett had run the docks for Dad for twelve years, and he ran the whole operation now.

I had not spoken to him alone since my father's funeral.

"Gavin has been telling the board you're unwell since last spring," he said. "That you forget things. That you left the stove on, that you cried in meetings, that you signed papers and denied it."

"I've never been in a meeting."

"I know that. I said so, twice. Nobody wrote it down."

My thumb was shaking on the screen.

"Why would he want them to think that?"

"Your father's shares are voted by you," Emmett said. "If the board thinks you can't vote, Gavin votes them for you."

He looked at the restaurant door, then back at me.

"Tonight was supposed to finish it. A green dress, a room full of witnesses and one scene from you. You gave them a calm one. That was the best thing you could have done."

"I read my vows to a table of strangers."

"You read them to a table of people he picked," Emmett said. "Every one of them will tell the board you were composed. Except Gavin."

I stared at him.

"Why tell me this? You voted to make him CEO."

His jaw moved.

"I did," he said. "I was wrong, and I'm saying so on your recording."

I stopped the recording and put the phone in my coat.

"Don't go home tonight," he said.

"It's my house."

"Then keep your phone out and your doors open."

He walked back inside without another word.

I drove home with the radio off.

Our house was lit up, every window.

Gavin's car was in the drive, and a second car sat behind it, an older sedan I knew.

It belonged to our family doctor, who had treated us for twenty years and had sat in this living room at my father's wake.

Gavin opened the front door before I touched it.

He had taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, the picture of a worried husband.

"Thank God. Come in, sweetheart. We're not going to make this a big thing."

The doctor rose from our sofa, his bag open on the coffee table.

"Tilda," the doctor said kindly. "Gavin called me. He says you've had a difficult evening."

"I've had a clear one."

"Sit down a moment. I only want to ask you some questions."

I did not sit.

"Doctor, ask me anything," I said. "I'll answer standing."

He asked what day it was. He asked me to count back from a hundred by sevens.

I did it.

He asked if I knew why my husband was concerned.

"Because I read my vows to his assistant," I said, "and he'd rather I had cried instead."

Gavin let out a soft, sad sigh, and the doctor made a note.

I took out my phone and played Emmett's voice into the room.

I did not play all of it. I played the part about the board, the stove, the signed papers I had never seen.

Gavin's face changed for half a second.

Then he smiled.

"Emmett has wanted my job for four years," Gavin told the doctor. "She's being used. Look how upset she is."

"I'm not upset," I said. "Look at my hands."

They had stopped shaking.

The doctor looked at them, and then at his notes, and for a moment I thought he would say something.

He closed his bag instead.

"I think everyone should rest," he said. "Tilda, call my office Monday."

Gavin walked him out.

I went into the kitchen.

The oven was cold and the door was shut.

The short ribs were gone.

The roasting pan was washed and put away, and the champagne glasses I had set on the dining table that morning were back in the cabinet.

Gavin came in behind me.

"I told you not to cook," he said, gently. "We were going out. Don't you remember we agreed?"

I opened the trash can.

The ribs lay inside, wrapped in foil, still warm.

I looked at him for a while.

"I remember everything," I said.

I went upstairs and packed one bag.

He stood in the bedroom doorway the whole time and did not stop me.

He only watched me pack, calm and patient.

When I came back down with my bag, my phone lit up on the hall table.

Six missed calls.

All from Rosewood Gardens, where my mother lived.

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