Divorced, Broke, and Back as His Perfect Wife novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Breakfast With the Investor

Lena performs the perfect wife for Edwin Hartwell at Dot's diner, moves into the house she once owned, and finds Bree in the kitchen at dawn wearing Brennan's shirt.

Edwin Hartwell chose Dot's diner for breakfast, and he took the corner booth by the register.

"I know this place," he told Brennan. "Ate here in 1979 when it had a different name and worse eggs."

Brennan stood in the aisle in a suit that cost more than the booth.

I stood behind the counter in my uniform, because Dot had decided I was working the shift and meeting the investor at the same time.

"Pour the man his coffee, Lena," Dot said. "Then sit down and be a wife."

I poured it.

Hartwell watched me do it. He watched how I tilted the pot so nothing dripped.

"You've done this before," he said.

"Six years part time. Then fourteen months full time."

"That's the whole résumé?"

"It's the part I can say in a diner."

He laughed once, short and dry, and pointed his cane at the seat across from him.

I sat next to Brennan. Our shoulders touched, and we both went still.

Hartwell noticed that too.

"Here is how I buy a company," he said. "I buy the man. The trucks I can get anywhere.

"Last night I watched a young man joke about his first wife, and I did not like what I was buying."

"Mr. Hartwell," Brennan started.

"I'm talking to her."

He turned to me.

"Tell me about a bad day in your marriage, Mrs. Corrigan."

I could feel Brennan go still beside me.

I could have told the truth about my worst day, with the hallway and the pink dress in it.

I had a better story. It was true too.

"The first winter," I said, "we had one truck, and the heater was broken.

"Brennan drove the long routes and I did the books in the passenger seat.

"That way he didn't need a dispatcher."

"Go on."

"One night in January it was nine degrees.

"We pulled over outside Columbus because the diesel was gelling.

"He put his own coat over my legs and sat there for four hours in his shirt, saying we were going to be fine."

Brennan had turned his head and was staring at me.

"Were you fine?" Hartwell asked.

"We were broke," I said. "But he said it like he meant it, and I believed him. I'd believe him again."

That last line was the performance. I made it sound true because it was.

Dot had stopped wiping the counter, and so had the two men at the next booth.

Hartwell looked at Brennan for a long moment.

"Young man. What did she give up for you?"

Brennan opened his mouth.

I watched him look for the answer. There were so many that he could not pick one.

"Her father's insurance money," he said at last, very low. "All of it. For the first truck."

"And you remember that."

"Every day."

I had not expected him to say it in front of anyone. I looked at the sugar dispenser until I was sure my face was steady.

Hartwell tapped his cane twice on the floor.

"All right. One year, and you both sign. I will not be told how it's going. I'll come to your house on a Tuesday, and I'll come without calling first."

"Of course," Brennan said.

"If the house looks like a set, I leave."

"It won't," I said.

Hartwell got up with the cane and stopped beside me.

"I carried plates in a place like this for ten years before I owned anything," he said quietly. "You pour a good cup, Mrs. Corrigan."

He left a hundred-dollar bill under his saucer.

Dot snatched it before the door closed.

"I'm keeping that for the lie you told," she said. "He didn't give you his coat."

"He gave me his coat."

"Honey," Dot said, "that's the first nice thing I ever heard about that man."

Brennan was still sitting there.

"Why did you tell it like that?" he asked.

"Because it worked."

"Lena."

"Sign the paper, Brennan."

He signed the contract his lawyer had sent by email, which I read twice on my phone at the counter.

Then he signed Dot's napkin too, because she asked.

By noon thirty-eight thousand dollars had left his account.

I called Maple Court from the back alley and heard the woman at the desk say my mother's balance was zero.

I stood there with the phone against my ear and cried until I was done.

That afternoon he drove me to the house.

I had one duffel bag and a garment bag. My whole life fit in the trunk of his car.

The house was the one I had picked, with the front steps I had painted and the maple I had planted in our second spring.

It smelled of someone else's perfume.

He showed me to the guest room, a clean white room with a bed and a lamp, and he stood in the doorway with his hands in his pockets.

"Bree's gone. She moved out Thursday."

"Good."

"I'll be at the office most nights."

"Good."

He went away down the hall.

I slept badly in a bed that was not mine, in a house that had been mine.

At six in the morning I went down to make coffee.

The kitchen light was on.

Bree stood at the counter with a mug in both hands, her hair loose, wearing nothing but one of Brennan's white shirts.

"Good morning, Lena," she said warmly. "I hope you don't mind. I never did get my key back."

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