The Wife Isn't Me novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: On Leave

"A major donor," I repeated to the security guard.

"That's all they told me. I'm sorry, Beth."

"Did they say which one?"

He looked at the floor again, which was an answer.

Mercy General had a new pediatric wing going up on the east side.

Wentworth Holdings was building it at cost.

Oscar had told me that on our second date, like it was romantic.

I drove Trish's car back to Hampden and sat in it outside her house for twenty minutes with the engine off.

Then I went inside and made a list of what I had left.

No job, unpaid, pending a review nobody would schedule.

No apartment, unless I wanted Edward Lowther's coffee in my kitchen every morning.

A checking account that Oscar had topped up on the first of every month for two years.

On Thursday morning I checked it.

The first of March had come and gone with no deposit.

I'd been so busy being happy, I hadn't noticed.

Eleven hundred and forty dollars.

That was my whole fortune, plus a ten-year-old Honda and a canvas tote of paper.

I didn't cry.

I wanted to, very badly, for most of Thursday.

Instead I went to the drugstore with Trish's son and bought a three-ring binder, a pack of sheet protectors and a box of colored tabs.

He chose the binder. It was purple with a unicorn on it.

"It's for important business," I told him.

"Unicorns do important business," he said. "Everyone knows that."

That night I spread everything across Trish's kitchen table.

Every ultrasound. Every lab result. Every text from Oscar for two years, screenshotted and printed at the library for ten cents a page.

The photo of the worksheet, blown up to full size.

The sticky note. Per E.L., both files ready.

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