Divorced, Now Watch Me Rise novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Lobby

Imogen carries the original photo into the Reeve tower; Dalton and Vera destroy her in public, and Brogan steps off the elevator. She crosses the street alone and a van aims at her.

"She cried at that table," I said. "She refilled my water glass."

"People cry when they get caught, and people cry when they're pretending," Hattie said. "You can't tell which until you ask."

So I decided to ask.

A copy shop on Cicero printed both originals for nine cents a page.

By noon I was standing in the lobby of the Reeve Holdings tower on Wacker Drive.

I was still in the dress I'd worn to dinner, and my bruise showed.

Hattie had parked across the street and would not come in.

"I'll be at the curb," she'd said. "If it goes bad, you walk straight out to me."

The lobby had forty feet of marble and a long security desk.

A guard in a grey blazer stepped around it before I reached the elevators.

"Mrs. Reeve, I've been told you're not permitted in the building."

"I'm not here to stay," I said. "I'm here to ask Lydia Coldwell one question."

"I can't let you up."

"Then I'll wait here."

I sat down on the edge of a marble bench with the folder on my knees.

People came in from the street and slowed down when they saw my face.

Some of them were already holding up their phones.

Then the elevator opened, and Dalton walked out.

Vera came out beside him in a navy coat, and Lydia walked half a step behind them with her head down.

Dalton's lawyer carried a leather folder.

"Imogen," Dalton said. His voice carried through the whole lobby. "I told you not to come here."

I stood up.

"You told me a lot of things. I want you to look at these."

I held up the café photo from Dalton's envelope in my left hand.

In my right hand I held Hattie's original of the same moment.

"This is the café on Halsted. Look at the chair across from me. In your picture there's a man in it, and in the real one there's Hattie."

I turned the page so the lobby could see.

"The date is in the corner. That's my friend's car, and I was asleep against her window. Somebody cut Brogan into my life."

Nobody spoke.

Dalton took the sheets out of my hand.

He looked at them for the length of a breath, and then he tore them in half, and in half again.

"Forged," he said. "Printed at a copy shop this morning."

"Dalton."

"A woman who sleeps with her husband's brother will say anything. Is that what you want printed tomorrow, Imogen?"

"It's what I want you to explain," I said, and turned to the woman behind him. "Lydia. I sent you that album in March. Did you give it to anyone?"

Lydia's face went white.

"I don't know what you mean," she said.

She said it too quickly.

Vera stepped forward and touched my sleeve with two gloved fingers.

"Dear, you are making a scene in my late husband's building," she said. "Go home to whatever man will take you."

Somebody near the doors laughed.

Dalton's lawyer opened his folder.

"Mrs. Reeve, this is a petition for dissolution. It cites adultery. It also bars you from these premises and from any Reeve property, and it is served."

He pressed the papers into my hand.

I felt the weight of them and nothing else.

"The baby isn't Brogan's," I said, loud enough for the phones.

"Then whose is it?" Dalton said.

"Yours. And everyone here will remember you asked."

For half a second something moved in his face.

Then the elevator down the hall chimed again.

The doors opened, and Brogan Buckley stepped out.

I had seen him three times in four years, and I had not once heard him speak more than a sentence.

He was taller than I remembered, in a dark suit with no tie, and a thin scar cut through his left eyebrow.

He took in the lobby in one look.

He took in the phones, the lawyer, the torn paper on the marble and my swollen cheek.

His face did not change, but his hand closed slowly at his side.

"Who did that to her?" he said.

"Stay out of this, Brogan," Dalton said.

"I asked a question."

Nobody answered him.

He turned to the guard.

"Get a car. She's with me."

"I don't know you," I said.

He looked at me directly, and his voice dropped.

"Then don't know me. Walk out with me or walk out alone. But you shouldn't be here when the cameras get the next shot."

I looked at the lobby, at Vera's pearls and Dalton's face and Lydia studying the floor.

I did not take his arm.

I walked out through the revolving door by myself.

The wind off the river hit me on the steps, and I saw Hattie's Corolla at the far curb.

I stepped off the curb at the crosswalk, with the light in my favor.

I heard an engine rev behind a parked truck.

A white van swung out of its lane and turned straight at me.

It did not slow down.

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