He Stole My Bill, So I Divorced Him and Outranked His Father novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Pen
At the Governor's bill signing, Greta stands in the third row, makes her husband explain section 3, and hands him divorce papers at the podium; the Governor's chief of staff puts the pen in her hand.
Conway thanked me last, and he thanked me for the cobbler.
"And my wife, Greta," he said, finding me in the third row with his best smile.
"She couldn't tell you the first thing about an aquifer, bless her heart. But she makes the best peach cobbler in Travis County."
The whole room laughed.
Everyone laughed, even the woman at the podium, and she was the one holding the pen.
I had written every page of that bill.
I wrote it at our kitchen table, at night, over fourteen months, after Conway went up to bed.
He had read the one-page summary. I knew, because I had written that too.
That morning he had laid my green dress on the bed and said, "Wear this. Smile. Don't talk to the press."
At 8:05 I sat in the parking garage and filed for divorce on my phone.
The petition was now in a white envelope on my knees, inside my handbag.
His father, the Senator, stood beside the podium and nodded along with every word.
Behind him stood a young aide in a blue dress.
She looked only at Conway, and when he said my name, she looked at the floor.
I did not know why I noticed that. I only noticed it.
Conway lifted his glass of water to the room.
"To the Springs Act," he said. "And to everyone who made it happen."
Everyone clapped.
I stood up.
My chair scraped, and people turned, and the nearest camera swung around to find me.
I walked down the aisle with my handbag in both hands.
I pulled the ring off my finger as I went. It came away easily. It had been loose for a year.
At the front, the woman with the pen looked at me over her reading glasses.
She was the Governor of Texas, sixty-one, a former judge from Lubbock, and she did not look surprised by much.
"Governor," I said, "may I ask the Representative one question before you sign?"
"Ma'am," she said, "you have the floor."
Conway laughed, short and bright.
"Greta, honey, sit down."
I looked at him.
"What does section 3 do?" I asked.
His smile held.
Nothing behind it moved.
"It protects the springs," he said.
"How?"
His eyes went to his father. His father looked at the ceiling.
A tall man in a gray suit stood against the wall by the Governor's door.
He was the only person in the room not watching Conway.
He was watching me.
"I'd like to hear the answer, Representative," the Governor said.
Conway opened his mouth and nothing came out.
"I'll tell you," I said, and I turned to face the cameras.
"Section 3 caps what anyone can pump from the recharge zone at what the rain puts back."
I kept my voice flat and loud enough to reach the back wall.
"It is the only reason the rest of the bill is worth signing."
"It took me four months to write, so the water districts couldn't get around it."
"I wrote it," I said. "I wrote all of it. My husband has never read it."
Nobody laughed.
I set my wedding ring on the wood of the podium, and I laid the white envelope on top of it.
"Those are divorce papers, Conway. I filed at 8:05. The first page is short, so you should be fine."
Somebody gasped. A camera shutter started and did not stop.
"Greta," Conway said, very low, "not here."
"You picked here," I said.
The Governor took off her glasses.
She signed the bill with a long, slow stroke, and the room watched her do it.
Then she held out the pen, not to Conway, but to the gray-suited man by the door.
"Emilio," she said.
He crossed the room and took the pen from her.
He was her chief of staff, and I knew his name from the news, and I had never stood this close to him.
He had a nose that had been broken once and gray coming in at his temples.
He stopped in front of me and turned my hand palm up.
"The author gets the pen," Emilio Cavazos said.
He laid it across my palm and closed my fingers over it with his own.
His hand was warm and dry.
It stayed there a breath longer than a pen needed.
I walked out through the middle of the room, and nobody stopped me until the rotunda.
Under the dome, a hand closed on my arm above the elbow, hard.
"You've lost your mind," the Senator said.
Royce Spurlock wore a bolo tie with a turquoise slide, and his silver hair did not move.
"Nobody in this town will take your call, Greta. Not one office. I will see to it."
I looked at his hand until he let go.
"Then I'll make my own calls," I said.
"Ms. Wehmeyer."
Emilio Cavazos had come up behind me, unhurried.
"The Governor would like to meet the author," he said. "Upstairs, if you have the time."
I had the time. I had nothing else at all.
On the second floor, at the desk outside the Governor's suite, a young guard pushed a visitor log and a ballpoint toward me.
I stood over it with the pen from the signing still in my left hand.
For four years I had signed everything Greta Spurlock.
I wrote my own name slowly, in capitals, so it would stay.
GRETA WEHMEYER.
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