Forgotten Groom in the Back Alley novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Ned's Car

Ned drives Jude away and tells him he has counted too; an HR complaint from Yvette arrives.

The two men in black jackets walked me out through the lobby without touching me.

One of them held the door.

"Sorry, man," he said quietly. "She's the client."

I stood on the curb in a ruined suit with my keys in my hand and no car, because Yvette had driven me there.

My phone had eighteen messages from her, and none of them were an apology.

A green hatchback pulled up to the curb with its hazards blinking.

The window rolled down.

"Get in," Ned said. "You smell like a fryer."

Ned Garvey sat two desks from me and had for six years.

He was the one engineer on the team who had ridden the long bus with me, on the nights Yvette drove Brodie home.

I got in and put a napkin over the passenger seat, and he said not to bother.

He pulled away from the hall without asking where I wanted to go.

"I saw everything," he said. "Half the room had their phones out. I'd stop checking the group chat."

"Did anyone say anything to her?"

"One person asked if you were okay."

"Who?"

"Me. After you left." He gripped the wheel. "I told Brodie you'd paid for the whole thing, and he told me to sit down."

We drove for a while with the window cracked and the smell of fryer oil filling the car.

I looked out at the streetlights and didn't talk.

"Can I tell you something?" Ned asked at a red light.

"You don't have to ask."

"I counted too."

I looked at him.

"The bus rides," he said. "You told me once, years ago, that you'd stopped keeping track. I started keeping it for you. It's in my notes app. There are a hundred and twelve."

"I only count ninety-nine."

"You count the ones where she was there. I counted the ones where she told you she'd meet you and didn't."

I put my head against the window.

Nobody had ever counted anything for me before.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because every time I tried, you said she was doing it for you." He pulled into the lot of an all-night diner and cut the engine. "I'm sorry. I should have said it anyway."

We sat at a booth by the window under a flickering sign, and Ned ordered two plates of eggs I didn't eat.

He took out his phone and slid it across the table.

It was the Harbor launch deck, the one Yvette's team had circulated on Friday.

The routing system on the second slide was mine.

I had built it over three winters, mostly at night, in the corner of my apartment, because Yvette said the division had no budget for a third engineer.

The slide read: Lead architect, Brodie Kohler.

My name was not on it anywhere.

"It goes to the whole company Monday morning," Ned said. "Brodie presents it. Yvette introduces him."

I read the line again.

"I wrote every line of that."

"I know. I watched you." He rubbed his eyes under his glasses. "And I watched him walk off with it, and I did nothing."

"You're doing something now."

"I'm giving you a ride."

"That counts."

He almost smiled.

The waitress topped up our coffee and looked at my suit, and she had the decency not to say anything.

"What do I do?" I asked him. I meant it as a real question.

Ned thought it over, his hand wrapped around the mug.

"Honestly? Don't go home tonight. She has a key. And don't answer her until you've slept."

"I don't have anywhere to sleep."

"You have a couch at mine. It's a bad couch."

My phone buzzed against the table.

It wasn't Yvette.

It was an email, from the human resources address at Linden Freight, sent at 9:14 that night.

Subject: Immediate administrative leave, pending investigation.

I opened it and read it twice.

A complaint had been filed against me by a director of the company for harassment and for causing a disturbance at a private event.

The complaint was signed Yvette Hargrove.

Ned read it over my shoulder and put down his fork.

"She filed it before she even got home," he said.

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