Fifteen Days to Divorce novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Red Carpet

At noon on premiere day, Ellie held Malachi's jaw in her hands and looked down his throat with a penlight.

"It's stress," she said. "The cords are fine. It happens to people who have carried a thing too long and put it down all at once."

Malachi wrote on the pad she gave him.

"Will it come back?"

"Tonight? I don't know." Ellie let go of his face. "Nobody does. I won't lie to you."

He wrote again, and held it up for Portia.

"I'll go on stage anyway."

"I know you will," Portia said.

She had hemmed the suit that morning with a needle in a hand that would not stop shaking.

She wore a green dress that Frances had brought in a garment bag, with a note pinned inside the hem.

It read, "Wear it like you meant it."

At six, the black car stopped at the end of the red carpet.

Four thousand people stood behind the rope.

The flashes went off.

Malachi got out first, in his charcoal suit, and offered her his hand.

She took it.

She had walked into nine weddings alone, and she walked this carpet with her chin up.

"Portia! Portia, over here!"

"Are you still divorcing on Sunday?"

"Is it true he can't speak?"

She stopped at the first microphone and smiled at it.

"He's saving his voice," she said. "I've been talking for both of us for two weeks. He says I'm very good at it."

The reporter laughed, and so did the line behind her.

Malachi, beside her, wrote a word on the pad and tilted it to the camera.

"Underpaid."

The crowd roared.

Portia leaned toward him and whispered, "You're going to ruin my dress with all that love."

He grinned, and it was the most beautiful thing she'd seen all year.

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