My Husband Regrets Divorcing Me novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Monday, 9 a.m.

Colin walks into the boardroom and finds his wife at the head of the table; a rival investor asks for her face.

At eight fifty-eight on Monday morning, my husband walked into my boardroom with a visitor badge on his lapel.

I sat at the head of the long table in a charcoal suit I had not worn in two years.

Nine board members stood when I came in, and not one of them looked surprised.

Colin did not see me at first.

He was too busy admiring the room.

The ceiling was twenty feet high, and a black-and-white photograph of the first Olmstead truck hung over the fireplace.

"Wow," he said under his breath to the assistant who had led him in. "Is the owner here?"

"The Chair is here," the assistant said, and gestured at me.

Colin turned his head, saw the woman at the table, and smiled at her politely.

Then the smile stopped.

I watched it stop.

It slid off one side of his face and left the other side behind.

"Selah?"

Nobody answered him.

"Mr. Coughlin," said the board's oldest member, a white-haired man, "please take a seat. The Chair will begin."

"The Chair?" Colin looked from me to the nameplate in front of me.

It said T. OLMSTEAD in brass.

"That's my wife," he told the room, and his voice cracked in the middle.

"That's the Chair of this company," I said. "Sit down, Colin."

He sat in the nearest chair.

I opened the folder in front of me.

"Item one is the ownership structure," I said.

"I am the sole voting holder of Olmstead Freight, through my father's estate."

"I have run this company for four years, with my signature on the memos and Ms. Mahoney's face on the press."

"You told me you did bookkeeping," Colin said.

"I do keep the books."

"For a bakery! You said a bakery in Bloomfield!"

"I said I had clients. I did not name them."

A board member coughed into his hand.

The silence went on long enough for me to hear the radiator.

"You signed my promotion," Colin said slowly.

"I signed it because you earned it."

"You earned it before you ever met me. The Erie run, the flooded Route 28 night, the trainees you stayed late to teach."

"Those were yours."

"But you let me think..." He stopped.

"I let you think I was small," I said. "That one was mine. I'm sorry for it."

His eyes were wet, and for a moment I almost reached across the table.

Then I remembered the curb.

"Mr. Coughlin, you'll stay in your role while the board reviews executive appointments," I said. "Nothing about your work is changing today."

"Nothing is changing?" His laugh was dazed. "Selah, you're the owner of the company I work for. I'm your husband!"

"For the moment."

I did not say it unkindly.

I said it flatly, the way you read a number off a gauge.

He looked around the table at nine people who had known all along.

The color rose in his face.

"All of you knew," he said.

"We were instructed to keep her confidence," the white-haired board member said. "Mr. Coughlin, I'd advise you not to say anything you can't take back."

Colin shut his mouth.

For once in his life, he had taken good advice.

"We'll continue," I said. "Item two. Executive appointments."

I did not look at him again for twenty minutes.

I did not need to.

I could feel him in the chair at the end of the table, a big man in a good navy suit.

He was learning that every bad thing he let happen to me had happened in front of my employees.

At nine-fifty the doors opened, and the assistant leaned in.

"Chair, Mr. Billington is here for his ten o'clock."

"I have no ten o'clock with a Mr. Billington."

"He says you've been refusing it for two years."

Fran, at my left, put down her pen and pressed her lips together.

"He's persistent," she said. "He's also been buying our supplier bonds since March. I thought you'd rather meet him than read about it."

"Send him in."

The man who walked in was tall, with black hair and a gray shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, no jacket, no tie.

He did not look at the board, or the photograph, or the view.

He looked at me.

It was the kind of look that took its time.

I felt it on the back of my neck, though he sat across the table.

"Ms. Olmstead."

"Mr. Billington."

"Roan."

He pulled out the chair opposite mine without being asked and sat down.

"Two years of memos," he said.

"Two years of Ms. Mahoney telling me the Chair is traveling, or unwell, or thinking about it."

"I was thinking about it."

"For two years?"

"I'm thorough."

One corner of his mouth moved.

"I wanted the face behind the memos," he said. "I'll admit I pictured someone older."

At the end of the table, Colin made a small, wounded sound.

Roan glanced at him once, took in the badge and the look, and turned back to me without a word.

"Is this a bad time?" he asked.

"It's a Monday," I said.

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