The Stranger I Married novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Thirty Days

Maya shows Carly her old decree letter, then Elias turns up at her studio with a deal: he signs the divorce on gala night if she does his lobby, and he hands back the ring she lost in Reno.

"Then sign the divorce," I said. "Right now, with all of them watching."

Elias looked at the six people at the table.

"Leave us, please," he said.

They left so fast the assistant forgot her tablet.

The door clicked, and for the first time in five years I was alone in a room with my husband.

The word felt like a swallowed stone.

"I'll sign," he said. "I'll sign anything you put in front of me. But not today."

"Why not today?"

"Because in thirty days this hotel reopens, and my mother wants my job."

He said it flatly.

"If the board hears the heir has a chapel wife in Reno before the opening, she gets her votes."

"And I get a box for my desk."

"That's your problem."

"It's about to be yours too. Your name is on that record."

I picked up my portfolio and held it against my chest.

"Come to my studio tonight," I said. "Not here. I'm not doing this in a room with a view."

I walked out past the lobby's dead marble and the dust sheets and the men on scaffolds.

I did not cry in the elevator.

I did it in the cab, quietly, with my face turned to the window.

Ferris Florals is a narrow storefront in Pilsen with a green door and a sign my mother painted.

Carly was behind the worktable stripping thorns off roses with a knife and a bandana on her head.

She took one look at me and put the knife down.

"What happened? Did they hate the sketches?"

"They loved the sketches," I said. "I'm married."

She laughed.

Then she stopped, because I wasn't.

I told her all of it, standing in the middle of the cooler with my coat still on.

"The guy from the bar?" She grabbed the counter. "The Reno guy? Maya, I dared you to marry a stranger, not a hotel!"

"Stop it."

"I'm not laughing."

"You are."

"I'm a little bit laughing, and I feel terrible."

I pulled the folded letter out of the drawer where I had kept it for four years.

It was on cheap letterhead, with a case number at the top.

DECREE OF DISSOLUTION, it said, and under it, in bold, the word FINAL.

Carly read it twice.

"That's real, right? You paid that guy eighteen hundred dollars."

"I thought it was."

"So he's lying."

"He knew about the decree. He said 'I know' when I mentioned it."

Neither of us said anything for a while.

Rain ran down the glass of the front window, and the little bell above the door was quiet.

At seven the bell rang.

Elias stood on the mat with water on his glasses and a paper bag in one hand.

He looked too large for my shop, all shoulders and navy wool, and a pail of white ranunculus almost went over when he turned.

"I brought dinner," he said. "I didn't know what you eat."

"Dumplings," Carly said from the cooler, in a voice that told him he'd better have brought dumplings.

He had.

I took the bag, because I am not an animal.

"Say the deal," I said.

He put both hands in his pockets.

"I sign the divorce petition the night of the gala, in front of anyone you like.

After the doors close and the board has gone home.

Until then you do the lobby."

"Why do I do the lobby?"

"Because the contract is your studio's winter."

He looked past me at the order sheets on the wall, at the red numbers I'd circled, at the overdue stamp on the lease.

I felt my face go hot.

"You looked at my lease," I said.

"I read your application. It's public record."

"That's creepy."

"It is," he agreed, and he sounded genuinely sorry about it.

The strange part was that I almost smiled.

My phone buzzed on the counter.

Nolan.

I turned it over so Elias could see the name, and I watched him read it.

"My fiance," I said. "Wedding's on the twenty-second of November."

Elias didn't flinch, but something behind his glasses went very still.

I answered.

"Hey, babe," said Nolan's warm radio voice. "Carly said you had a big meeting. How'd it go?"

"I think I got the job."

"Of course you did. Hey, quick thing. my vetting guy flagged some old Nevada record with your name on it. What is that?"

My heart stopped.

"I'll handle it quietly," Nolan said. "You handle it quieter. Love you."

He hung up.

Elias had not moved.

"Thirty days," I said.

"Thirty days."

He reached into his coat and took out a tiny velvet bag, the kind jewelers use for rings.

He put it on the worktable between a pair of shears and a bucket of eucalyptus.

I knew what it was before I opened it.

A thin silver band with a scratch on the inside, the ring I had lost on a hotel carpet in Nevada.

"I kept it," he said.

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