He Voted Me Off the Island, So I Left Him Stranded novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Brant's Condo

She packs her life out of his condo and receives a check for the trouble.

I got my phone to forty percent in Ben's shed, and I used it to text him from my own car.

I had parked it in the lot behind the shelter at five that morning.

Fern: If anyone from that family calls you for a boat, will you tell me first?

He answered before I had buckled my seat belt.

Ben: I'll run a boat for you. I won't run one for anybody with that last name unless you say so.

Ben: That's the terms.

I looked at the word for a second.

Fern: Fine by me.

Then I drove to Portland, because my winter coat, my laptop and my mother's quilt were all in Brant's condo.

I had a key. I had paid half the cable bill for four years.

The doorman stood up when I came through the lobby.

He had known me since the day Brant and I got the elevator stuck with a couch.

"Ms. Merrow," he said. "Mr. Thornquist's mother called the front desk an hour ago."

"From the island?"

"From somewhere with bad reception." He cleared his throat. "She asked me to keep your boxes in the lobby and not let you up."

I stood very still on the marble.

"Did she say why?"

"Only that you had been voted out and it would be kinder to avoid a scene."

Voted out.

It had been two hours, and the word had already traveled thirty miles.

"My key still works," I said.

"It does."

"Then I'm going up. If your manager has a problem with it, he can call Brant's mother back and tell her I said hello."

The doorman looked at me and then at the elevator.

"I'll hold it for you," he said.

Upstairs the condo smelled like Brant's coffee and the lemon cleaner I bought in bulk.

His running shoes were by the door. His mother's framed photograph of the island house hung over the couch.

I started in the bedroom with the big duffel.

Underwear, jeans, my winter coat, my mother's quilt off the back of the chair.

I took the knife roll from the kitchen drawer, because I had bought every knife in it myself.

I took my laptop off the desk and the three books Brant had never opened.

I took the couch cushions with my initials sewn on the back.

I had made them in my first month here, and he had called them charming.

I did not take the pearl-gray sofa. It had cost eleven hundred dollars, and I could not carry it.

I told the doorman to put it on a list for later.

It did not take long.

Then I stood in the kitchen with my left hand on the counter.

The ring was a small, good diamond.

Brant had proposed with it over dinner a year ago, and his mother had asked to see it before I did.

I pulled it off and set it down on the counter next to the coffee maker.

It made a tiny click.

My hand looked wrong without it. I decided that would pass.

I wrote a note on the pad by the fridge.

I paid $31,400 toward the wedding. I want it back.

I thought about that, and I crossed out "want" and wrote "will have."

Downstairs the doorman had stacked the boxes by the door, and he helped me carry them to the car.

"There's one more thing, Ms. Merrow."

He went behind his desk and came back with a cream-colored envelope.

"Mr. Thornquist left this at the front desk at dawn, on his way out."

He cleared his throat.

"He said to give it to you if you came for your things."

At dawn, before the ferry shelter, before the box.

The envelope had my name on the front in Brant's handwriting.

I opened it in the lobby with the doorman looking at the floor.

Inside was a check for five thousand dollars, drawn on the Thornquist family account.

The memo line said: For the trouble.

It was signed by Judith, and it was dated that morning.

Brant had put it in my hands before anyone had voted.

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