He Sent Me Away for Three Years. Now My Divorce Has Him Panicking. novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Yellow Room

At the penthouse her workshop is Archie's nursery and his drawing shows her as the lady who lives far away; in Dalton's locked drawer her notebooks have the proof pages torn out as Belinda calls from the hall.

Ruby VanDorn met me outside the penthouse elevator with a roll of packing tape and no plan to be polite.

She had driven in from the airport hotel where the company had put her up, and she still had her safety glasses pushed up in her red curls.

"You told me to bring tape for your notebooks," she said. "I brought tape for his face too."

"We're collecting my things, Ruby."

"Collecting. Sure."

I had told her everything on the phone at one in the morning, even the side door and the screen that said Done.

She had listened without speaking for almost a minute, which for Ruby was a medical event.

The penthouse door opened before I knocked.

Belinda stood there in a soft grey sweater with her hair pulled back and Archie on the floor behind her stacking blocks.

"Come in," she said. "Dalton said you'd be by. I made coffee."

She did not look like a woman who had read a text over my shoulder the night before.

She looked like a hostess.

"We can do it fast," I said.

"Take all the time you want." She touched my arm. "It's still your home, Monica. I mean that."

Ruby made a small noise in her throat.

I walked past the kitchen, past the white sofa I had never sat on, and down the hall to the room at the end.

Dalton had told me three years ago that the spare room was mine, for when I visited.

I had visited twice, both times for a board dinner, and I'd never been allowed to stay a night.

The door was painted yellow now.

Inside were a toddler bed with a dinosaur quilt, a shelf of picture books and a small desk covered in crayons.

My shelves were gone.

My prototype cases were gone.

Ruby stopped behind me.

"That was your bench," she whispered. "You built that bench."

"I know."

"Where did your boxes go?"

A small voice answered from behind us.

"The big boxes are in the closet. Mommy said they're boring."

Archie stood in the doorway holding a piece of paper in both hands.

He was four years old and he had a dinosaur on his sweater and big, serious grey eyes.

I crouched down so we were the same height.

"Hi, Archie."

"I made you a picture."

He held it out.

It was drawn in four colours of crayon.

There was a dog with a big tail, a woman with yellow hair, a tall man with a square head and a stick figure off to one side, very small, standing alone at the edge of the paper.

"Who's that?" I asked, and pointed at her.

"That's the lady who lives far away," Archie said. "Dal says she works very hard. Mommy says she's sad because she can't come home."

I looked at the lonely little figure for a long moment.

Nobody had told that child I was a person, I thought.

They'd told him I was a place.

"Thank you," I said. "Can I keep it?"

"Yes. Biscuit's in it so you have to."

I folded it into my jacket pocket, and Ruby turned her face toward the window and blew her nose.

The closet was deep and smelled of cedar.

My boxes were stacked at the back under a pile of winter coats.

Ruby dragged the first one out and I started going through them with my hands, not my eyes, counting.

Lab coats.

The safety manual I wrote for the Harbor City team.

A shoebox of cables.

Four of my six field notebooks were there, the black ones with the elastic strap.

I couldn't find the other two.

"Ruby, where are the green ones?"

"The green ones are the Meridian designs." She went still. "Those are the ones the board wants the credit for."

"I know."

"Where did you keep them when you were here?"

"In his desk."

I had not thought about it until I said it aloud.

When I came to those two board dinners, Dalton had asked to keep my working notebooks overnight, to read them.

I had said yes both times, because he was my husband and I thought he was proud of me.

I stood up and walked back down the hall to Dalton's study.

The door was unlocked.

The desk was a big walnut slab with a drawer on each side, and one of the drawers had a brass lock.

I knelt and looked at it.

It wasn't a hard lock.

Ruby appeared in the doorway holding a bobby pin from her curls.

"Don't ask me where I learned this," she said.

It took her three tries and the drawer gave.

The drawer slid open on a stack of leather folders, a letter opener and my two green notebooks, tied together with a rubber band.

I picked up the top one.

My name was on the cover in my own handwriting.

Somebody had gone through it with a yellow marker.

The last pages of both notebooks, the ones with my full filing dates for the Meridian design, were gone.

Torn out neatly along the spine.

"Monica," Ruby said, very quietly. "Those were your proof."

From the hallway, light and friendly, Belinda called out, "Do you two need any help in there?"

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