The Home She Built With Someone Else novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Folder

In his mother's Pittsburgh kitchen Nathan finds his dated originals and sends them to Hearthline's investors. An email arrives from Margot Tornquist: Nigel could not have drawn these plans.

My mother was frying eggs at six in the morning because that was how she handled bad news.

"Sit," she said. "You look like you drove here."

"I flew."

"You look like you drove here backward."

I sat in the chair by the window, the one my father used to take, and she put a plate in front of me and said nothing else until I'd eaten half of it.

She had been a school bus dispatcher for thirty-one years. She knew how to wait for a driver to start talking.

"They put the house in his name," I said. "My money's in it. Justine says it's just paper."

"Whose paper?"

"Nigel's."

My mother set down the spatula.

"Nigel who ate at this table at Christmas," she said.

"Yes."

"Nigel who borrowed your good coat."

"Yes, Ma."

She looked at the window for a while.

"I have four thousand dollars in the coffee can over the fridge," she said. "It's yours if you want to sue somebody."

I laughed, and it came out wrong, and she patted my head.

My phone buzzed on the table.

Justine had left three voicemails overnight.

I played the first one on speaker, because I wanted my mother to hear how it sounded.

"Nate, it's me. I know you're upset. Nigel talked to the bank and the room can be nineteen hundred instead of twenty-one, that's a real discount. And the investor demo is on the fourteenth and I can't do it without you. Call me. Love you."

My mother's mouth went flat.

"She said love you," she said, "and she said investor demo, and she put the discount in the middle."

"It's a good discount," I said.

"Nathaniel."

The second voicemail was Justine crying, and the third was Nigel.

"Hey. Justine's a mess. Look, the laptop is company property, so ship it back by Friday. Anything you made while on payroll belongs to Hearthline, that's just standard. No hard feelings, man."

The line went quiet.

Then he said, "You'll come around."

My mother held out her hand for the phone, listened to the end of it again, and handed it back.

"I'd like to hit that boy with a bus," she said.

I went up to my old bedroom and pulled my sketchbooks out of the duffel.

Five of them, black cloth covers, each page dated in the corner with my initials.

That was a habit from the federal job. Every drawing there needed a date and a signature, or it didn't exist.

At Hearthline it had never mattered. Everyone knew whose hand it was.

I turned to the page dated six months before Hearthline's first investor deck.

There was the Capitol Hill floor plan, in pencil, with a note in the margin: closet wall carries the shelf run, studio gets north window.

I had drawn it on a Sunday, at our kitchen table, while Justine asked what I wanted for dinner.

I photographed it. Then thirty more pages, one after another, until I had every plan in their deck with a date older than Nigel's name on it.

Hearthline's lead investor had two partners. Both had been on every board update I'd ever been copied on.

I wrote the email in four lines.

"These are the original sketches for the plans in your pitch deck, dated. I drew them. Hearthline's credits list someone else. I'm no longer with the company. Nathan Boyle."

I read it once.

Then I pressed send, before I could turn it into a paragraph.

It was eleven when my phone buzzed again, and it wasn't Justine.

The sender was Margot Tornquist, director of residential design, Tornquist Group, Chicago.

I knew the name. Everyone in my field knew the name. Her family's firm built half the towers on three skylines.

I opened it standing up.

"Mr. Boyle. Hearthline's deck reached my desk last month. The unit plans in it use a closet wall to carry the shelf run in the second bedroom. It is the best small decision in the deck."

"Mr. Clery presented it as his. When I asked him why the closet was there, he said it was a closet."

I read that line three times.

Since the sales gallery, nobody had said out loud what I already knew was true.

"I don't believe he drew it. If you did, tell me what the closet is for. If you didn't, ignore this. M. Tornquist."

I sat down on my childhood bed and typed with two thumbs.

"It carries the shelf run. Without it the studio loses the north window and the room goes dark. I drew it on a Sunday in March. I can show you the page."

I sent it before I could second-guess it.

Her answer arrived inside a minute.

"Thursday, ten a.m., Tornquist tower, thirty-fourth floor. Bring a pencil."

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend