My Fake Wedding Was the Start of Their Real Prison novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Formality

Sadie tells her mother everything, quits Brett's family company to his face and hands back his key, and at 1 a.m. Spencer's lawyers send her mother's board a claim on the trust for $60 million.

I read the page four times in the back of that car.

The words didn't change.

The undersigned trustee pledges the Lowell Family Trust as additional security, up to sixty million dollars.

The undersigned trustee was me.

The driver kept glancing at me in the mirror.

"Rough day?"

"I got married," I said. "Sort of."

My apartment in Los Feliz still smelled like the candle Kelsey gave me for my birthday.

I blew it out, threw it in the trash and stood in the shower in my slip until the water ran clear.

Then I sat on the bathroom floor in a towel and called my mother.

She picked up on the first ring.

It was nearly midnight in Boston.

"Are you hurt?" she said.

Not hello. Not what happened.

"Only my face," I said. "And my pride. Mom, I need to read you something."

I read her the page.

All of it, down to the date.

There was a long silence on the line.

I could hear her reading glasses tap against the chain she wore them on.

"Did you read it before you signed it?"

"No."

"At your own wedding."

"At my own wedding."

Another silence.

"The guarantees come out of Corwin Group at nine on Monday," she said. "I called the lenders an hour ago. Get on the first flight you can."

"Mom, the letter..."

"Is sixty million dollars of your father's family's money with your name on it. I know. Come home, Sadie."

She hung up.

My mother had never once said goodbye on a phone call.

I got dressed and started on the closet.

At ten-thirty somebody knocked.

Brett stood in the hallway with two bags from the Thai place on Hillhurst.

Pad see ew, extra egg, no peppers.

My order since high school.

"Peace offering," he said, and walked in past me like he lived there.

He'd lived there, on and off, for four years.

He saw the suitcases and laughed.

"Come on. Where are you going to go?"

"Boston."

"Sure you are." He set the bags on my counter. "Sadie, we've been doing this since we were six. You get mad, I bring noodles, we're fine."

"We're not six."

"Next Saturday," he said. "Small. Just family. My dad already said yes to the club."

I took the white folder off the table and held the cream page in front of his face.

"What is this?"

He barely looked at it.

"Oh. That's Spencer's thing."

"Spencer's thing."

"For the tower. The auditors need a formality on file before year end." He shrugged. "Babe, you'd have signed it for me anyway. You always do."

You always do.

I thought about every form he'd ever slid across a table at me.

The car lease. The apartment. The job at his father's company, six years of it, at two-thirds of what the men on my floor made.

I always did.

"It's dated September second," I said.

"So?"

"So I signed it today."

He rolled his eyes.

"It's paperwork, Sadie. You work in real estate. Nobody reads the dates."

I put the page back in the folder.

Then I opened my laptop on the counter, between his noodles and his car keys.

"What are you doing?"

"Resigning."

I typed it while he watched.

Three lines to his father. Effective immediately. Thank you for the opportunity.

I hit send.

Brett laughed again, but it came out wrong this time.

"You can't quit my dad by email."

"I just did."

I went into the bedroom and came back with a shoebox.

His hockey jersey from eighth grade.

The friendship bracelet he made me at summer camp, faded to gray.

A movie stub from our first real date, which he'd forgotten the next day.

I put the box in his arms and set my spare key on top of it.

"Take these. And give me mine."

He stared at the box.

"Sadie. Come on."

"Your key to my place. Now."

He worked it off his ring slowly and dropped it in my palm.

"You'll call me Tuesday," he said. "You always call me Tuesday."

"Brett, the Lowell guarantee comes out of your tower on Monday morning."

He actually smiled.

"Your mom would never do that."

"She already did. I asked her to."

The smile stayed on his face a second too long.

"Sixty million," I said. "Tell your father before the lenders do."

He left the noodles.

He took the box.

I locked the door behind him and leaned against it until my legs stopped shaking.

Then I packed.

Shoes, books, my father's old watch, the good knives.

I left the candle in the trash and every picture of the four of us face down in a drawer.

At five minutes past one, my laptop chimed.

An email.

From: Counsel for Treadwell Ridge Partners.

To: Wanda Lowell and the Board of Directors, Lowell Capital.

Cc: Sadie Lowell.

Subject: Notice of Claim.

Pursuant to the attached letter, executed by trustee Sadie Lowell, Treadwell Ridge Partners hereby notifies the Lowell Family Trust that it will call on the full sixty-million-dollar pledge upon any withdrawal of Lowell support for the Ocean Avenue project.

The attachment was my page.

My blue ink.

My little hook on the L.

My phone lit up on the counter.

Spencer.

Welcome to the family business, Mrs. Treadwell.

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