My Ex-Convict Beggar Husband Is Now a Trillionaire novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Released
Caleb walks out of prison to a wife who does not know his voice, then finds his mother being dragged from the hospital.
The prison gate opened at seven on a Tuesday in November, and nobody was waiting for Caleb Merrick.
He stood on the cracked sidewalk in the clothes he had worn the day they arrested him.
The jeans hung off his hips now, and the coat swallowed his shoulders.
He looked down the road both ways.
No car.
No flowers.
No wife.
His wife, Chantal, had sworn to pay every bill for his mother if he signed for the crash.
He signed that night.
In court the next morning Chantal sat in the second row with her left wrist in a brace and her arms crossed.
She did not look at him once.
He told himself she was too ashamed.
Now he pulled out the old phone the guards had handed back and called her.
It rang four times.
"Hello?" she said.
She sounded busy and bored.
His throat closed.
Three years, and her voice still made his chest ache.
"Chantal."
"Who is this?"
He stopped breathing.
"It's Caleb."
"Caleb." She said it slowly, testing it.
Then she laughed, short and light.
"Oh. You're out already?"
Already.
"The warden said he called you two weeks ago with my release date."
"Did he? I don't remember that."
He heard keys, a door, and another voice in the background that said her name.
"I've been swamped," she said.
"Brannigan Group takes everything I have."
"Where is my mother, Chantal?"
"Your mother." A pause.
"St. Anselm, I think. I'll text you the address."
"You haven't gone to see her?"
"I told you, I've been swamped, Caleb."
His phone buzzed in his hand.
Fifty dollars.
Under it came an address.
"Take a cab," she said.
"We'll catch up another time."
She hung up.
He stared at the black screen.
For three years he had counted the days until he could hear her voice, and she had needed a full minute to place his.
He flagged a taxi and watched the fifty dollars shrink on the meter.
On the ride he opened the social app he had not touched in three years.
Desmond Ashburton's page loaded first.
Chantal was in every picture.
Chantal at a lake, Chantal at a gala, Chantal laughing with her head on Desmond's shoulder.
The newest post was an hour old.
Desmond knelt on a restaurant floor with a ring.
Chantal had both hands over her mouth and tears on her cheeks.
The caption read, "She said yes."
Caleb put the phone face down on his knee.
The driver glanced at him in the mirror and said nothing.
St. Anselm's lobby was loud.
A woman was screaming down the hall.
Caleb ran toward it before he understood why.
Two nurses held his mother by the arms and dragged her toward the doors.
Carolyn Merrick wore only a thin hospital gown.
Her bare feet slid on the tile, and her gray hair hung in her face.
She weighed almost nothing.
"Mom!"
He grabbed the nearest nurse by the sleeve.
"Let her go. What are you doing?"
The head nurse stood by the doors with a clipboard against her chest.
She was a broad woman with a hard mouth.
She shoved him in the chest with both hands, and he went down on one knee.
"Who are you?" she said.
"I'm her son."
"Her son." She laughed.
"Her account is a year behind, honey. We aren't a shelter."
"I'll pay. Give me one day."
"With what?"
She looked him over from his prison coat to his worn-out shoes.
"You look like you slept in a drain."
Caleb pulled off his coat and wrapped it around his mother's shoulders.
A younger nurse ripped it off her and threw it on the floor.
"Hospital property stays in the hospital," she said.
"The gown is ours."
"Is Chantal here?" Carolyn asked him, looking past his shoulder.
"She promised me she would come."
"No, Mom."
His voice cracked.
"She's not coming."
"Please," Carolyn whispered from the floor.
Her hand reached for him.
"Caleb, I'm so cold."
His phone buzzed again against his hip.
A new email sat on the lock screen, the sender in bold: Bernard Gage, Skyward Technologies.
The subject line read: Mr. Merrick, you are free. Call me before you do anything else.
Skyward was the student startup he had put his father's life insurance into, years ago, when it was worth nothing.
He had no time to open it.
The head nurse waved at the doors.
"Put them both on the sidewalk," she said.
"Let them freeze together."
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