My Husband Kept Sending Packages to Ex, So I Filed for Divorce novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Leave It on the Mat

Becca moves over Norma's garage and files, then delivers Keith's newest box to Shana, who calls her delivery girl, and finds two more boxes for 3B from other men.

The whole dock had gone quiet.

Forty drivers were pretending to scan boxes.

"Monday," I said. "You couldn't wait till I was off the property?"

"You'd have heard about it by lunch anyway." Mitch shrugged. "I'm not gonna sneak around you, Hoyle. I've been saving for this as long as you have."

"I've been saving for it longer."

"You've been saving with a husband. I've been saving with a grandpa who thinks the internet is a fad."

"Both of you hush," Norma said.

She pointed a cinnamon roll at Mitch.

"You can put a check on my table Monday if you want to. It'll sit there till the fifteenth. I gave Becca my word, and my word doesn't come with a coupon."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Now load your van."

He went.

He took van 22.

Norma turned back to me.

"Where are you sleeping tonight?"

"My parents'. Then I don't know."

"The room over my garage has a bed and a space heater and a toilet that runs if you look at it wrong. It's yours."

"Norma, I can't pay you rent right now."

"Did I say rent? I said toilet."

I moved in Saturday.

My father brought his pickup to the house in Kettering, and we carried my half of the marriage out to it.

My clothes. My grandmother's quilt. My boots. The coffee maker, because I bought it.

Keith sat on the couch the whole time in his quarter-zip.

"You're really doing this over some boxes," he said.

My father carried the coffee maker past him without a word.

"Bec. It's a few gifts. You're blowing up five years over a few gifts."

"Forty-one," I said. "And a loan."

I took the wedding photo off the hall wall on the way out.

I left the nail.

Norma's room over the garage smelled like motor oil and cedar.

She fed me chili from a crockpot that is older than I am.

Then she put the cribbage board on the card table and took twelve dollars off me in an hour.

"You peg like a Methodist," she said.

"What does that even mean?"

"Slow and sorry."

On Monday morning I came down the garage stairs and found Mitch at Norma's kitchen table.

There was a cashier's check in front of him, face up.

Norma was frying eggs with her back to him.

"Morning, roomie," Mitch said to me.

"I'm not your roomie. I live over the garage."

"Close enough. You want toast?"

"It's my toast. It's Norma's toast."

Norma slid the check back across the table with her spatula.

"Fifteenth," she said.

Mitch tucked it back in his jacket.

Then he made me toast anyway.

On my lunch break I signed the divorce petition at a lawyer's office in a strip mall next to a vape shop.

It took barely ten minutes.

I ate a gas station hot dog in the van afterward and felt fine about it.

Tuesday, I loaded Route 14 at five like always.

I was halfway through the morning when I pulled the next box off the shelf and read the label.

1180 Larkspur Court, Apartment 3B.

The packing slip was tucked in a clear sleeve on the side.

"Sorry about Thursday. Love, K."

He'd ordered it Friday.

The day after I left him on her curb, he'd sat on our couch and bought her a scented candle.

I carried it up all three flights.

The stair creaked in the usual place.

I set it on the gold mat, raised the scanner, and lined up the photo.

The door opened before I could take it.

Shana stood there in leggings and a sweatshirt, her phone in one hand.

She looked down at the box, then up at me, and smiled.

"Oh, good. It came."

I didn't say anything.

"Leave it on the mat, delivery girl," she said. "That's what you're for."

"It's on the mat."

"Then take your picture and go." She leaned on the frame. "Keith says you're living in a garage now. That's so brave."

I took the picture.

The scanner beeped.

"Have a good day," I said, because I say it at every door, and I wasn't going to let her be the one door I didn't.

She laughed and shut the door.

Down in the van, I sat in the driver's seat for a second.

Then I reached for the next box on the shelf.

1180 Larkspur Court, Apartment 3B.

Not from the shopping app. A plain brown box, the label printed at a shipping counter.

The sender was a man in Columbus.

I checked the shelf behind it.

There was one more.

Same apartment.

A different man, from Cincinnati.

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