My Sunset Love Affair with the Billionaire CEO novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Notice on the Door
A deputy tapes a sale notice to Lorna's door and Dale arrives with a moving van; she takes her mother's sewing machine and signs up for a dating show with nowhere else to go.
The deputy taped the notice to my front door at eight o'clock on a Saturday morning.
I stood in the hall in my bathrobe with a cup of coffee going cold in my hand.
"Mrs. Quist, the sheriff's sale was in September," he said. "The new owner takes possession today."
"That's wrong," I said. "My husband pays the mortgage. He has paid it for thirty-four years."
The deputy looked at his boots.
"Ma'am, nobody has paid it since June."
I read the notice twice.
The buyer was listed as Quist Motors LLC, and the sale date was six weeks ago.
Six weeks ago I had still been ironing Dale's dress shirts and mailing them to the dealership.
"He left in June," I said. "He told me he needed room to think."
"I'm sorry," said the deputy.
Behind him, my street was waking up.
The man across the road stopped raking his leaves.
The widow next door came out on her porch with her little dog in her arms.
Then a white moving van turned the corner and backed up my driveway.
Dale's truck came right behind it.
He climbed out in a quarter-zip sweater and sunglasses, with a woman half his age tucked under his arm.
She wore a white puffer coat and held a coffee she had clearly bought on the way.
"Lorna," Dale said, in the voice he used on customers. "I wanted to do this gently."
"Gently," I said. "You hired a van."
"The house belongs to the company now. You were told."
"I was not told."
"You signed the papers in March." He shrugged. "The refinance. Page nine was a spousal waiver."
I remembered that afternoon at his desk.
He had pointed at six yellow tabs and said, "Sign where it's flagged, Lor, I'm late for a lunch."
I had signed six times and gone home to make him soup.
"What did the waiver cover?" I asked.
"The house." He smiled. "And the retirement account. Two hundred and twelve thousand dollars, give or take."
My hands went cold around the cup.
That money was thirty years of my paychecks from the school district, plus the two jobs I had worked when Britta was small.
It was the only reason I had planned to stop working at sixty.
The school district had cut my sewing position in April, and I had told myself it was fine, because I had that account.
"Where is it?" I said.
"It's reinvested." He waved a hand. "In the business."
His new wife laughed into her coffee.
"Honestly, Dale, she's taking it better than I thought."
"I'll give you an hour for your things," he said. "Personal items only. Anything in a closet is the company's."
The widow next door gasped out loud.
Four neighbors were standing on their lawns now, and none of them pretended to rake.
I put my coffee on the porch rail very carefully so it would not shake.
Then I went inside and took my mother's Singer sewing machine from the spare room.
I packed one duffel bag with underwear, my good shoes and my reading glasses.
I left the wedding album on the shelf.
I left the good china on the table.
His wife was already standing in the kitchen in her white coat, picking up my mother's gravy boat to look at the bottom.
I put my hand on it, and she let it go.
"I'll take that," I said.
"It's a gravy boat," she said.
"It's my gravy boat. Check the receipt."
I carried the sewing machine out the front door past my husband.
"You've got nowhere to go," Dale called after me. "Nobody's going to take you in, Lorna. You're fifty-eight."
I handed my duffel bag and the machine to the widow, who took them without a word.
She put her dog down and held out her free arm.
I hugged her, and then I crossed the street.
The Lutheran church was holding its fall rummage sale on the lawn.
At the end of the folding tables stood a pop-up banner I had walked past twice without reading.
SUNSET HEARTS, it said. NOW CASTING SINGLES 55 AND OVER. $500 FOR YOUR TIME. THREE WEEKS AT HARBOR LIGHT LODGE. HOUSING PROVIDED.
A woman with a sleek black bob and a headset looked up from a clipboard.
"Are you here to sign up?" she said.
"I'd like to be on television," I said.
"Why?"
"Because I just lost my house in front of my whole street," I said.
"I want the man who did it to have to watch."
The woman took off her headset slowly.
"Hi," she said. "I'm Renata. Sit down."
I took the pen and wrote my name on the form.
Under emergency contact I started to write my daughter Britta's number, and then I crossed it out.
Britta was in Denver, and she was happy.
I would tell her when I could say it with a roof over my head.
Across the road, Dale's new wife was watching me with her mouth open.
"Housing provided?" I said to Renata, tapping the banner.
"Starting tonight," said Renata. "Do you have a bag?"
I looked back across the road.
The widow was holding up my duffel bag in one hand and my mother's sewing machine in the other.
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