Marrying My Ex's Boss novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Paper

My old apartment in Bloomfield smelled like coffee, dust and Colin's body spray.

Joyce stood in the doorway on Sunday morning with a flashlight in her cardigan pocket.

"It's just a closet," I said.

"It's evidence," said Joyce. "Where?"

I dragged the box out from under a pile of winter coats.

It held eight notebooks with black covers, and a 2022 laptop with a cracked corner.

Every page was dated in the upper right in my square handwriting, with a coffee ring on at least half.

Eight months of Heron, from the first bad sketch of a glove curve.

The last pages were from the night in August when I finally got the surge factor to stop lying.

Joyce turned the pages with two fingers.

"This is good," she said. "But anyone can write a date."

"They're not anyone's, they're mine."

"A lawyer will say you wrote them last week." She tapped her bifocals. "You need something he can't have."

"The server's gone."

"The server's gone. But you've got a habit, honey. Everybody does. What's yours?"

I stared at the notebooks.

"Marigold," I said slowly.

"Beg pardon?"

"My mom calls me Marigold. Since I was little."

"Every spreadsheet I've built since I was nineteen has a hidden tab with that name, empty, with one cell in it."

"I don't know why. It's a stupid private thing."

Joyce's face did something complicated.

"If he copied the folder," she said, "it's in his version."

"If he didn't delete it."

"Does he know it's there?"

"Colin has never once looked at a hidden tab in his life," I said. "He thinks they're a bug."

We stood there in the dusty closet light.

"We can't prove it," Joyce said finally. "Not without his file. Not until he shows it to someone."

"Then we wait."

"We build," said Joyce. "You and me, in that break room, every lunch."

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