My Substitute Wife Is Not on the Return Manifest novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Private Pickup
Signe tells her best friend she is leaving for Rotterdam and the marriage is ending; Dane picks her up in the storm, takes Brooke's drunk call, drops Signe at the ferry terminal and logs the trip with her name. She decides to strike her name off that log in front of everyone.
A Coast Guard helicopter went over the cafe so low that the cups shivered on their saucers.
Signe put her palm flat on the table and counted three slow breaths.
Her best friend waited until the sound faded.
Then she leaned in and kept her voice down.
"You're really moving to Rotterdam?"
"The data center wants me in seven days," Signe said. "I already said yes."
"And your husband?"
Signe turned her phone face down.
The last thing on the screen was a message from the family court.
Both filings received. Hearing set in fifteen days.
"In fifteen days I won't be his wife," she said.
Her friend set her mug down so hard that coffee jumped over the rim.
"Does he know?"
Signe did not answer.
Two weeks ago she had hidden the petition between the chart transfer forms and the base access renewal.
She had slid the pile across the kitchen table to her husband.
He had come straight off a night flight, with one earplug still in his left ear.
His phone had been buzzing the whole time with Brooke Ellery crying on the other end.
He had signed the last page with the stylus without reading a line.
Then he had picked up his flight bag and left.
He had never asked about it again.
The wind chime over the cafe door rang hard.
Dane came in with rain on the shoulders of his gray flight jacket.
Her friend said his name, and he tilted his head toward her, as he always did to catch a voice.
"The storm warning got upgraded," he said. "I was heading back, so I came to get you."
He took the chart tube off Signe's shoulder before she could object.
Julie was still standing by the table when they went out.
The pool sedan smelled of wet wool.
The wipers beat at the glass and the coastal road vanished behind the rain.
A dented gray ID tag hung from the key ring in the ignition, stamped W. E.
It was not Dane's.
In three years Signe had never asked whose it was.
At the second light he tapped his watch twice, which he did before saying anything he didn't want to say.
"What was that attachment you had me sign?"
So he remembered.
"It's in your flight bag," Signe said. "Open it and see."
His phone rang before he could answer, and he hit the speaker button by mistake.
Brooke's voice filled the car, thick with drink.
"Dane, I'm at the Old Harbor floating dock and there's nobody here."
"Brooke," he said.
"The waves keep making me think of Dad's accident. Will you come get me?"
His jaw went tight. "There's no mission tonight. Why are you out there?"
"Don't snap at me. I wanted to see where he took off the last time."
She made a small broken sound.
"Forget it. You have a wife. I shouldn't have come back."
The call cut off.
Dane's hands closed on the wheel.
Three years ago Brooke had vanished before their wedding, leaving one line on a note.
I can't be your burden.
He pulled onto the shoulder and opened the station's dispatch system on the tablet.
A red banner came up. PRIVATE USE PROHIBITED.
He clicked through it and typed fast.
"Send me your exact location," he said into his phone.
Then he turned to Signe, and he looked sorry, which was worse.
"The ferry terminal is right up ahead. You can wait there for Julie to get off work."
Once the storm warning took effect, every rideshare on the Cape had stopped running.
He knew that, and he drove her to the terminal anyway.
Signe did not remind him.
"Okay," she said.
She stepped out under her umbrella and the wind nearly tore it away.
The terminal door was already locked for the night.
She stood on the empty dock and watched the red taillights go out of sight.
Seven years ago the wind had blown exactly like this.
She had been a cadet at the Maritime Academy then, and a pilot soaked to the skin had wrapped a blanket around a rescued child before he thought of himself.
She took out her phone and typed to Dane.
The file you asked about is in the bottom of your flight bag. It isn't only chart paperwork.
Half an hour later he answered.
You never make mistakes with documents. I don't need to read it.
Rain ran out of her hair and down her collar.
She turned off the screen, and it lit again at once with an automated message from the station.
Vehicle log. Driver: Lt. Cmdr. D. Mayhew. Override: spouse transport. Passenger: Hallowell, Signe. Purpose: official.
He had cleared the red banner with her name.
On the permanent record, she was sitting in that car.
So Signe decided she would take her name off that log herself in the morning, in front of everyone who had read it.
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