The Day I Divorced Him, I Became His Landlord novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Necklace Is Yours
At the Heritage Gala on her fifth anniversary Marisol hands her ring, her key card and her emerald necklace to her husband's mistress, then walks out. At midnight her family's loan comes due and the Ashbury estate becomes hers.
On our fifth anniversary, in front of four hundred guests at the Napa Heritage Gala, my husband told me to take off my necklace.
He wanted me to give it to Courtney Fenn.
Courtney stood by the dessert table in emerald green.
She wore a gold grapevine pin on her shoulder, the same pin Conrad wore on his lapel, and she touched it whenever someone looked her way.
The whole ballroom was waiting to see how long his wife would keep pretending she hadn't noticed.
"Darling, you haven't been yourself lately," Conrad said, loud enough for the nearest tables.
"Emeralds suit her better tonight. Be generous."
One sentence, and Courtney became the gracious guest while I became a woman at the edge of a breakdown.
He had done it for five years.
My dresses were too bright, so he chose beige.
When I pushed back, he tilted his head and asked, "Are we having one of our bad nights, Marisol?"
An hour earlier, his mother had found me in the corridor outside the powder room.
Lillian Ashbury pressed a handkerchief into my hand and asked how my mother's knees were holding up.
She was the only Ashbury who ever asked.
"Be patient with him tonight, dear," she said. "Patience is how you keep a home."
Now she stood across the ballroom with one hand on the handbag that had held a thick folder all evening, watching her son.
Five years ago, I had asked my brother Joaquin for five years to make this marriage work.
He made me promise that if Conrad was still humiliating me on our fifth anniversary, I would come home.
Tonight was the day.
Conrad watched my fingers go to the clasp and smiled, sure I had given in again.
I crossed the floor and fastened the necklace around Courtney's throat myself.
Her smile began to bloom.
I slid my wedding ring off and pushed it onto her finger.
Then I took the key card to our house out of my clutch and closed her hand around it.
"The necklace is yours," I said. "So is the house."
I turned and looked at my husband.
"And so is he."
Courtney snatched her hand back.
Conrad stepped close and dropped his voice. "Don't make a scene in front of these people."
I smiled at him.
"It won't be your problem much longer."
He had no idea what night it was.
Five years ago, to save the Ashbury estate, his family had borrowed nine million dollars from mine and pledged the land as collateral.
The note came due at midnight, and renewing it took one signature.
Mine.
I stepped to the edge of the room and called my brother.
"Joaquin. Come get me. The five years are up."
"I'm already in the car," he said.
Conrad straightened his bow tie as he passed me on his way to the stage.
"Go run my slides," he said. "No more trouble."
I didn't refuse.
I had run his slides at every gala for five years, and tonight I wanted that booth.
"The Ashbury family has farmed this valley for more than a century," Conrad told the room. "We believe tradition means responsibility."
Courtney sat in the front row in my emeralds, already looking like the lady of the house.
When he reached the words ancestral estate, Conrad glanced up at my window.
The next slide should have been the manor from the air.
That afternoon Joaquin had sent me one photograph, and I had given it to the technician without explaining.
I pressed the button.
The screen showed a tractor in front of a field of turned earth.
My father stood beside it in mud-streaked trousers, and my mother wore her old straw hat.
Joaquin had his arm around my shoulders, and I was tanned and loud in a red softball jersey.
Somebody in the audience laughed.
Courtney's smile froze.
Conrad turned, saw our farm in Fresno forty feet high, and left the stage without finishing.
His hand closed around my arm before I had both feet out of the booth.
He hauled me through a side door into the service corridor.
"Did you do that on purpose?" His fingers dug in. "You humiliated me in front of everyone."
"I thought it was a nice picture," I said. "Are you ashamed of it?"
"Marisol."
"Your great-grandfather planted grapes on a dirt farm too. Which part is embarrassing?"
His mouth opened, and nothing came out.
I pulled my arm free, walked into the lounge beside us and locked the door.
My hands were shaking.
My phone lit up with a message from Joaquin.
The lawyers are in the lobby. You did great, Mari.
A second one followed.
Our dirt will outlast their wine.
The lock clicked.
Conrad let himself in with a spare key card.
"Putting on a show?"
"I was thinking how long five years is."
"You're not well tonight, and it worries me." He stepped closer. "Maybe I should have the doctor come and talk to you."
For five years, every time I argued, there had been a doctor, a prescription or an evaluation.
I said nothing, and he took my silence for surrender.
He straightened my collar with two cool fingers.
"Behave, and we can go back to how things were."
Outside the door, Courtney called, "Conrad? Everyone's waiting."
He left me standing there.
I looked at the open door, then at my hands, which had stopped shaking.
So I stepped out.
I walked through the ballroom, past the necklace and the pin and four hundred stares, into the lobby.
A man in a dark suit was waiting there with a black leather folder.
"Mrs. Ashbury, I'm Joaquin Quintero's attorney. At midnight, the Ashbury estate becomes yours."
I took the folder.
In three hours, I would own my husband's house.
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