While He Built Her Home novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Seven Days
Valerie's best friend wins the week her husband promised her at a charity auction, and Valerie learns whose money paid for it.
Brynn's gold paddle went up at nine-forty, and my husband clapped.
I sat next to him in the hotel ballroom with a pregnancy test in my purse.
Two pink lines. I had watched them show up that morning in the bathroom of my new studio, and I hadn't told a soul.
I planned to tell Jared after the gala, in the car, with the engine off.
"Twenty-five thousand!" Brynn called, laughing, one hand on her collarbone.
She wore the navy dress I had taken in at the waist for her on Tuesday.
I hadn't charged her. She said that since the divorce nothing she owned felt like hers.
The whole room turned to look at her, and then at Jared, and everyone smiled.
Only minutes earlier he had rested his arm along the back of my chair and told me the auction item was a weekend job.
"Look at a house, fix a few things," he had said. "It won't touch your move."
I move Linen & Lamp on Monday. Seven years in a storefront on Alder Street, and now a real studio on Mill Street with room for a lamp wall.
Jared had promised me a truck, two of his crew and every evening that week.
The calendar on our refrigerator had his name written across all seven days.
The auctioneer held up a card and read it out.
"The Seven-Day Home Reset, donated by Jared Vaughn of Vaughn and Quade Homeworks. Seven consecutive days, Monday through Sunday."
A photo of Jared came up on the big screen, tape measure in hand, grinning.
Someone whistled.
"The winner gets Jared in residence at her house for the whole week," the auctioneer said. "He sleeps there, he cooks, he builds her wish list. No exceptions for personal conflicts."
The dates appeared under his face.
They were my dates.
"In residence," I said to Jared. "Where?"
He didn't turn his head. "I told you it runs all week."
"You told me a weekend."
"Most of the work is on the weekend."
"He just said you sleep there."
"It keeps the project on schedule, Val."
He said it flat, like a line on a delivery invoice.
The gavel came down. People stood and clapped.
Brynn pressed both hands to her mouth. Two women from the committee hugged her.
I put my fingers around Jared's wrist. "You knew. You knew the dates when you signed."
He looked at my hand, not at me.
"Everyone heard the terms."
"Then fix the terms."
"It's signed. It's charity. I can't back out in front of two hundred donors because we have a scheduling problem."
A scheduling problem.
We had signed the Mill Street lease in July. He had picked the walnut for my display wall himself and drawn a circle around that week on our calendar.
He had said it was mine, whatever happened at work.
"Brynn just got divorced," he added. "She's alone in that house. She needs the help."
"So you move in with her."
"It's one week."
Brynn came down the aisle with her paddle against her chest and stopped at our table.
"Val, I know the timing is awful."
It was the same soft voice she used at the clinic, both times, while we waited.
After the second treatment failed, she had boxed up my medication and carried it out to her own car to throw away for me.
"But it's for the children's fund," Brynn said. "You're so much better at all this than I am. You'll forgive me."
She went on to the stage before I could answer.
Jared stood.
I took hold of his jacket. "If you go up there, everybody in this room sees you leave with her."
"Don't make it ugly."
"What would you call it?"
He took my fingers off his sleeve, one at a time, and walked up.
The auctioneer handed him a green ribbon, and he looped it over Brynn's head.
He straightened it at her neck.
The photographer said, "Closer," and Brynn laid her hand flat on his chest.
When the flash went off, he stayed where he was.
I stood up, and nobody looked at me, because I wasn't the one on the stage.
So I stopped waiting for him to explain.
I walked to the donations table by the door, where a woman in a black blazer was sorting cards.
"I'm Valerie Blakely," I said. "Jared Vaughn's wife. Who paid for Brynn Foley's bid?"
She checked the list and smiled at me kindly.
"It was a prepaid donor credit, ma'am. Bought three weeks ago. It came off the Linen & Lamp business card."
My business. My card. The lease deposit and the move fund, every cent of it mine.
Jared was a signer on that card because I had trusted him.
"Did he buy it?"
"I'm not able to say who."
"You just said whose card."
She looked down at her list.
I went out through the lobby, past the coat check, and into the parking garage.
I sat in my car with my hands flat on the wheel.
Then I opened the banking app and froze every card on the Linen & Lamp account, his included.
It took four taps.
My phone buzzed before I had put it down.
The bank's alert read: Charge blocked. Larkin Baby and Nursery, $18,600. Delivery: 41 Linden Court.
I knew Linden Court.
It was Brynn's street.
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